
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






























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TOXIN 


TWENTIETH CENTURY SERIES. 


•ffn tbc /©lost of Blarms, 
Ubc 2>ev>ll’s plasgrounb, 
Ube jface ant> tbe flDasfc, 
Ube ipbantom Bcatb, . 
Ube Sale of a Soul, . 
©eat> /Tan’s Court, 
Sinners tlwaln, . . . 

Uorln, 

H /TOarrleb a UGUfe, 
Blana’s ibuntlng, . . 


. Robert Barr. 

. John Mackie. 

, Robert Barr. 

♦ W. Clark Russell. 

. F. Frankfort Moore. 

. Maurice H. Hervey. 

, John Mackie. 

. Ouida. 

♦ John Strange Winter. 
, Robert Buchanan. 










Toxin 




B Storg of Denlce 


By 


OUIDA 


AUTHOR CF “MOTHS,” “UNDER TWO FLAGS,” 


ETC., ETC. 




JLLUSTRA TED By 
LOUISE L. HEUSTIS 
ry\jL W * • 


IRew JtJorfc an& Xonbon 
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 

t* 1*7 5 a 




\ 


Copyright , iSQSy by 

BA CH ELLER, JOHNSON & BA CHEL LER 


Copyright , 1895 , by 

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 


Copyrighted in Great Britain by 
T. FISHER UNWIN 


Goyin. 


i. 

“ Oh ! my necklace ! ” cried a 
fair woman, as she leaned over 
the side of her gondola. 

A string of opals, linked and 
set in gold, had been loosened 
from her throat, and had slid 
down into the water of the 
lagoon, midway between the 
Lido and the city of Venice. 
But the gondola was moving 
swiftly under the impulsion of 
a rower fore and aft, and, 
though they stopped a few mo- 


2 


Gorin. 


ments after at her cry, the spot 
where it had fallen was already 
passed and left behind. She 
was vexed and provoked. She 
had many jewels, but the opal 
necklace was an heirloom, and 
of fine and curious workman- 
ship. The gondoliers did their 
best to find it, but in vain. 
They were in the deeper water 
of the sailing roads, which were 
marked out by the lines of 
poles, and the necklace, a slight 
thing, had been borne away by 
the current setting in from the 
open sea. 

It was a pale afternoon in 
late summer ; the heat was still 
great ; the skies and the waters 
were of the same soft, dreamy, 
silvery hue, and the same 


tloifn. 


3 


transparency and ethereality 
were on the distant horizons of 
the hills, west and east. The 
only color there was came from 
the ruddy painted sails of some 
fruit-laden market boats which 
were passing to leeward. 

Neither of the men could 
swim ; many Venetians cannot ; 
but they got over the side, and 
waded up to their waists in 
the water, and with their oars 
struck and sounded the sandy 
bottom, whilst she encouraged 
them with praise and extrava- 
gant promise of reward. Their 
efforts were of no avail. The 
lagoon, which has been the 
grave of so many, kept the 
drowned opals. 

“ We will go back and send 


4 ttoifm 

divers,” she said to her men 
who, wet to their waists, were 
well content to turn the head 
of the gondola back to the city. 

They wore white clothes 
with red sashes and red rib- 
bons round their straw hats ; 
they were in her private ser- 
vice ; they steered quickly 
home again over the calm wa- 
ter-way, and in and out the 
crowded craft by the Schia- 
vone, past the Customs House, 
and S. Giorgio, and the Salva- 
tore, until they reached a pal- 
ace on the Grand Canal, which 
was their mistress’s residence, 
with poles painted red and 
white, with coronets on their 
tops, marking the landing stairs 
in the old Venetian fashion. 


XCoiin* 


5 


“ I have lost my opals in the 
water!” she cried to a friend 
who was on one of the balco- 
nies of the first floor. 

“ I am glad you have lost 
them,” replied her friend. 
“ They are stones of misfor- 
tune.” 

“ Nonsense ! They were 
beautiful, and they were Ni- 
netta Zaranegra’s, poor Carlo’s 
great-great-grandmother ; they 
were one of her nuptial pres- 
ents a hundred and twenty 
years ago. I must have the 
men dive and dredge till they 
are found. The water is so 
shallow. I cannot think how 
the collar can have vanished 
so completely in such a mo- 
ment of time.” 


6 


Goiin. 


She ascended her palace 
steps, and dismissed her gon- 
doliers with a gesture, as she 
paused in the entrance-hall to 
tell her major-domo of her 
loss, and consult him as to the 
best means to recover the neck- 
lace. The hall was painted in 
fresco, with beautiful Moorish 
windows, and a groined and 
gilded ceiling, and a wide stair- 
case of white marble, uncar- 
peted. Opposite the entrance 
was a latticed door through 
which was seen the bright 
green of acacias, cratsegus, and 
laurel growing in a garden. 

On the morrow, when it was 
known through Venice that 
the rich and generous Countess 
Zaranegra had lost her jewels, 


tloitn. 


7 


all the best divers hurried to 
the place where the opals had 
dropped, and worked sedu- 
lously from daybreak to find it, 
sailors and fishermen and boat- 
men all joining in the search, 
in hope to merit the reward 
she promised. But no one of 
them succeeded. Their efforts 
were useless. The tenacious 
water would not yield up its 
prey. The opals were gone, 
like spindrift. 


II. 

The winter came and went, 
wrapping Venice in its mists, 
driving the sea-birds into the 
inland canals, making the pig- 
eons sit ruffled and sad on the 
parapets of the palaces, and 
leaving many a gondolier un- 
employed, to warm his hands 
over little fires of driftwood 
under the snow-sprinkled raft- 
ers and naked vine-branches of 
his traghetto. The gondoliers 
of the Ca’ Zaranegra were 
more fortunate ; they could sit 
round the great bronze brazier 
in the hall of their lady’s 


{Toxin. 


9 


house, and the gondola was 
laid up high and dry to await 
the spring, and their wages 
were paid with regularity and 
liberality by the silent and aus- 
tere major-domo who reigned 
in the forsaken palace, for 
their lady was away on warmer 
shores than the wind-beaten, 
surge-drowned, sea-walls of 
their city. 

The winter was hard ; snow 
lay long on the Istrian hills 
and on the Paduan pastures ; 
there was ice on the rigging of 
the Greek brigs in the Giu- 
decca, and the huge ocean 
steamers from the east looked 
like uncouth prehistoric beasts, 
black and gigantic, as they 
loomed through the fogs, mov- 


10 


Goxfn< 


in g slowly towards the docks 
under cautious pilotage. There 
were laughter and warmth in 
the theatres, and the sounds of 
music came from some of the 
palaces; but in the Calle, in 
the fishermen’s quarters, on the 
islands, on board the poor 
rough sailing craft, and amongst 
the maritime population gen- 
erally, there were great suffer- 
ing and much want ; and by 
the bar of Malomocco and off 
the coast of Chioggia there 
were wrecks which strewed the 
waters with broken timbers 
and dashed drowning sailors 
like seaweed on to the wooden 
piles. Stout boats were broken 
like shells, and strong seafar- 
ing men were washed to and 


Goxfn. 


i 


fro like driftwood. But the 
frail opal necklace of the 
Countess Zaranegra was safe in 
the midst of the strife ; it had 
fallen into a hollow in a sunken 
pile and lay there, unharmed, 
whilst above it the stormy 
tides rose and fell, and the 
winds churned the cream of 
the surf. There it lay, all 
through the rough winter 
weather, whilst the silvery 
gulls died of hunger, and the 
sea swallows were hurled by 
the hurricane on to the lan- 
terns of lighthouses and against 
the timbers of vessels. 

It weathered many storms, 
this frail toy, made to lie on 
the warm breasts of women, 
whilst the storm kings drew 


12 


XToitn. 


down to their death the bread- 
winners for whom wife and 
children vainly prayed on 
shore, and the daring mariners 
for whom the deep had had no 
terrors. 

In the hollow of the old oak 
pile the opals remained all 
winter long, lying like bird’s 
eggs in a nest, whilst the rest- 
less waters washed and swirled 
above its sanctuary. The worn 
stump of the wood had kept 
its place for centuries, and 
many a corpse had drifted past 
it outward to the sea in days 
when the white marbles of St. 
Mark’s city had run red with 
blood. It had once been the 
base of a sea-shrine, of a Ma- 
donna of the waters to whom 


Goifn. 


13 


the boatmen passing had in- 
voked the Stella Maris Virgine 
so dear to fishermen and sail- 
ors. 

But the painted shrine had 
long disappeared, and only the 
piece of timber, down under- 
neath the waters, rooted in the 
sand amongst the ribbon weed 
and mussels, had had power to 
resist the forces of tide and 
tempest. 

All the winter long the old 
wood kept the opals safe and 
sound. When the cold passed, 
and the blasts from the Dolo- 
mite glaciers softened, and the 
orchards of the fruit islands 
were in bud, the opals were 
still in their hollow, covered 
from the sea by the bend of 


14 


Gorin. 


the wood above them, so that, 
though often wet, they were 
never washed away. 

But one day, when the peach 
and pear and plum trees had in 
turn burst into blossom on the 
isles, and the flocks of gulls 
who had survived the stress of 
famine and frost had returned 
to their feeding-places on the 
outer lagoons, a large iron ship 
coming from the Black Sea 
gave a rude shock in passing 
to the old oak pile ; the top of 
it under the blow parted and 
fell asunder ; the necklace was 
washed out of its hiding-place, 
and, carried in the heavy trough 
of the steamer’s path, was 
floated nearer to the isles, far- 
ther from the city. It became 


Gorin. 


15 

entangled with some algae, and, 
rocked on the weed as on a 
little raft, was borne to and fro 
by a strong wind rushing from 
the north-east, and so was 
driven round past San Cristo- 
foro and Burano, and was fi- 
nally carried ashore up the 
creeks into the long grasses 
and reeds beneath the Devil’s 
Bridge at Torcello. The yel- 
low water iris was then flower- 
ing, and two little reed warblers 
were nesting amongst the flags, 
as the opals were drifted up 
under some hemlock leaves 
and there rested. 

“ I think they are eggs, but 
they are all strung together,” 
said the warbler to his mate. 

“ They look more like the 


16 tToxin. 

spawn of a fish,” said the little 
winged lady, with scorn. 

A water-rat came up and 
smelt at them, then went away 
disdainfully ; they were not 
good to eat. For birds and 
beasts do not care for jewels : 
it is only humanity, which 
thinks itself superior to them, 
which sees any value in stones, 
and calls such toys precious. 


III. 

The devil is credited with 
building many bridges on the 
earth ; it is hard to know why 
he should have done so, since 
waters however wide cannot 
possibly have been an obstacle 
in his own path. 

But Devil's Bridges there 
are, from the Hebrides to the 
Isles of Greece ; the Devil’s 
Bridge at Torcello has been so 
called from the height and 
breadth of its one arch, but 
there is nothing diabolic or in- 
fernal in its appearance ; it is 
of old brick made beautiful in 


18 Gorin. 

its hues by age, and has many 
seeding grasses and weeds 
growing in its crevices. Its 
banks are rich in grass; in 
flags, in sea lavender, and 
about it grow hazel trees and 
pear trees. 

There is nowhere in the 
world any grass richer than 
that of Torcello, and forget-me- 
nots, honeysuckle, and wild 
roses grow down to the water's 
edge and around the hoary 
stones of the deserted isle. 

“ What a God-forgotten 
place ! ” said a young man as 
he sprang from a boat on to 
the bank by the bridge. 

“ Torcello was the mother of 
Venice; the daughter has slain 
her,’* replied an older man as 


{Toxin. 


19 


he laid down his oars in the 
boat, and prepared to follow 
his companion. 

His foot trod amongst the 
hemlock leaves and was en- 
tangled by them ; he stooped, 
and his eyes, which were very 
keen, caught sight of the string 
of opals. 

“ A woman’s necklace ! ” he 
said, as he drew it out from 
under the salt seaweed, and the 
dewy dock leaves. It was dis- 
colored, and had sand and mud 
on it, and bore little traces of 
its former beauty ; but he rec- 
ognized that it was a jewel of 
worth ; he perceived, even 
dulled as they were, that the 
stones were opals. 

“ What have you there ? ” 


20 


{Toxin. 


cried the younger man from 
above on the bank. “ The 
skull of an Archimandrite?” 

The other threw the neck- 
lace up on to the grass. 

“You would have been a 
fitter finder of a woman’s col- 
lar than I am.” 

“ Opals ! The stones of sor- 
row ! ” said the younger man, 
gravely, as he raised it and 
brushed off the sand. “ It has 
been beautiful,” he added. “ It 
will be so again. It is not 
really hurt, only a little bruised 
and tarnished.” 

The necklace interested him ; 
he examined it minutely as 
the sun shone on the links of 
dimmed gold. It awakened in 
him an image of the woman 


Gorin. 21 

who might have possessed and 
worn it. 

“What will you do with 
it ? ” he said to his companion, 
who had mounted on tq the 
bank after securing the boat. 

“ What does one always do 
with things found ? Send 
them to the police, I believe.” 

“ Oh you Goth ! ” said the 
younger. “ Let us spend our 
lives in discovering the owner.” 

“You can spend yours so if 
you like, Prince. Mine is al- 
ready in bond to a severer mis- 
tress.” 

“ Lend me your glass,” said 
the younger man ; the glass 
was of strong magnifying 
power ; when it was handed to 
him he looked through it at 


22 


Goiin. 


some little marks on the back 
of the clasp of the opal collar. 
“Zaranegra 1770," he read 
aloud. “ Zaranegra is a Vene- 
tian name.” 

There was an inscription so 
minute that to the unaided eye 
it was invisible ; through the 
glass it was possible to read it. 
It was this : 

NINA DELLA LUCEDIA 

CONTESSA ZARANEGRA 
Capo d Anno 
1770. 

“ Zaranegra ! ” repeated the 
younger man. “ That is a Ve- 
netian name. Lucedia is a 
name of the Marches of An- 
cona. There is a Ca’ Zarane- 


Goiln. 


2 3 


gra on the Grand Canal. It is 
next to the Loredkn. You ad- 
mired its Moorish windows on 
the second story this morning. 
Carlo Zaranegra died young; 
he left a widow who is only 
twenty now. She is a daugh- 
ter of the Duke of Monfal- 
cone ; a family of the Tren- 
tino, but pure Italians in blood. 
Their place is in the mountains 
above Gorizia. It must be she 
who owns this necklace, an 
heirloom probably/’ 

“Take it to her,” said the 
finder of it, with indifference. 
“ I cede you my rights.” 

The younger laughed. 

“ Ah ! who knows what they 
may become ? ” 

“ Whatever they may be- 


24 


ftoiin. 


come they are yours. I do not 
appreciate that kind of reward.” 

“ Really ? ” said the younger 
man. “ If so I pity you ! ” 

“ Nay, I pity you,” said the 
elder. 

The young man still stood 
with the opals in his hands ; 
with a wisp of grass he had 
cleared the sand in a measure 
off them ; the pearly softness 
and the roseate flame of the 
stones began to show here and 
there ; two alone of their num- 
ber were missing. 

“ Come,” said his companion 
with impatience. “ Put that 
broken rubbish in your pocket 
and let us go and see the Cathe- 
dral and S. Fosca, for it will 
soon grow dark.” 


Goxin. 


25 


They walked along the dyke 
of turf which traverses the isle, 
past the low fruit trees and the 
humble cabins of the few peas- 
ants who dwell there ; the grass 
was long and full of ox-eyed 
daisies, and purple loosestrife, 
and pink campion. They soon 
reached the green and quiet 
place where the sacred build- 
ings of S. Maria and S. Fosca, 
stand in the solitude of field 
and sea. 

They entered first of all the 
old church of S. Fosca. The 
younger man went straight to 
the altar with uncovered head 
and knelt before it, a soft and 
serious look upon his face as his 
lips moved. 

The elder cast a glance, con- 


26 


Gorin* 


temptuous and derisive, on him, 
and turned to look at the five 
arcades, with their columns, so 
precious to those who under- 
stand the laws of architecture. 

He was learned in many 
things, and architecture and 
archaeology were the studies 
which were to him pastimes, in 
the rare hours of recreation 
which he allowed himself. 

“ Have you prayed to find the 
mistress of the opals ? ” he said 
to the younger man who, risen 
from his knees, approached him, 
a red light of the late afternoon 
slanting in from an upper win- 
dow in the apse and falling on 
his bright hair and beautiful 
classic face. 

The young man colored. 


Go xln* 


27 


“ I prayed that the stones 
may bring us no evil,” he said, 
with ingenuous simplicity. 
<l Laugh as you will, a prayer 
can never do harm, and you 
know opals are stones of sor- 
row.” 

“ I know you are a credulous 
child — a superstitious peasant — 
though you are twenty-four 
years old and have royal and 
noble blood in your veins.” 

“ If you had not saved my life 
I would throw you into the 
sea,” replied the other, half in 
jest half in anger. “ Leave my 
faiths alone. Lead your own 
barren life as you choose, but 
do not cut down flowers in the 
garden of others.” 

“ Life is truly a garden for 


28 


£oifn. 


you,” said the elder man, with 
a touch of envy in the tone of 
his voice. 

It was dusk in S. Fosca for 
the day was far advanced, and 
the sun was setting without be- 
yond the world of waters. 

Two peasant women were 
saying their aves before low 
burning lamps. The scent of 
the grass and the smell of the 
sea came in through the open 
door. A cat walked noiselessly 
across the altar. As the church 
was now so it had been a 
thousand years earlier. 

“ Does this place say nothing 
to you ? ” asked the younger 
man. 

“ Nothing,” replied the other. 
“ What should it say ? ” 


IV. 

When the young Sicilian 
prince, Lionello Adrianis, head 
of an ancient Hispano-Italian 
family, had met with a hunting 
accident, and the tusks of an 
old boar had brought him near 
to death, an English surgeon, 
by name Frederic Darner, who 
was then in Palermo, did for 
him what none of the Italian 
surgeons dared to do, and, so 
far as the phrase can ever be 
correct of human action, saved 
his life. A year had passed 
since then ; the splendid vitality 
of the Sicilian had returned to 


30 


Goxfn. 


all its natural vigor; he was 
only twenty-four years of age 
and naturally strong as a young 
oak in the woods of Etna. But 
he had a mother who loved him, 
and was anxious ; she begged 
the Englishman to remain 
awhile near him ; the Sicilian 
laughed but submitted ; he and 
Darner had travelled together in 
Egypt and India during several 
months, and were now about in 
another month to part com- 
pany ; the Sicilian to return to 
his own people, the Englishman 
to occupy a chair of physiology 
in a town of northern Europe. 

Their lives had been briefly 
united by accident and would 
have parted in peace : a collar 
of opals was by chance washed 




31 


up amongst the flags and bur- 
docks of Torcello and the shape 
of their fate was altered. 

With such trifles do the gods 
play when they stake the lives 
of men on the game. 

Darner was the son of a coun- 
try physician, but his father had 
been poor, the family numerous, 
and he, a third son, had been 
sent out into the world with 
only his education as his capital. 
He practised surgery to live ; 
he practised physiology to reach 
through it that power and cele- 
brity for which his nature craved 
and his mental capacity fitted 
him. But at every step his 
narrow means galled and fretted 
him, and he had been a demon- 
strator, an assistant, a professor 


32 


Gorin, 


in schools, when his vast ability 
and relentless will fitted him 
for the position of a Helmholtz 
or a Virchow in that new priest- 
hood which has arisen to claim 
the rule of mankind, and sacri- 
fices to itself all sentient races. 

In Adrianis he saw all the 
powers of youth and of wealth 
concentrated in one who merely 
used them for a careless enjoy- 
ment and a thoughtless good 
nature, which seemed, to him- 
self, as senseless as the dance 
in the sun of an amorous 
negro. 

Adrianis and the whole of 
his family had shown him the 
utmost gratitude, liberality, and 
consideration, and the young 
prince bore from him good- 


Goitn. 


3J 


humoredly sarcasms and sat- 
ires which he would not have 
supported from an emperor ; 
but Darner in his turn felt for 
the Sicilian and his people noth- 
ing but the contempt of the 
great intellect for the uncul- 
tured mind, the irritation of the 
wise man who sees a child gaily 
making a kite to divert itself 
out of the parchments of a 
treatise in an unknown tongue 
which, studied, might have 
yielded up to the student the 
secret of perished creeds and of 
lost nations. There is no pride 
so arrogant, no supremacy so 
unbending, as those of the 
intellect. It may stand, like 
Belisarius,'a beggar at the gate ; 
but like Belisarius it deems it- 


34 


Goxfn. 


self the superior of all the 
crowds who drop their alms to 
it, and while it stretches out 
its hand to them its lips curse 
.them. 


V. 

They went, without visiting 
the basilica, back to Venice in 
the twilight which deepened 
into night as they drew near 
the city ; the moon was high 
and the air still. They dined 
in the spacious rooms set aside 
in the hotel for the young 
prince. When the dinner was 
over Adrianis rose. 

“ Will you come ? ” he asked. 

“ Where ? ” asked Darner. 

“To the Ca’ Zaranegra,’ he 
replied, with a boyish laugh. 

“ Not I,” replied Darner. 


36 


Goifn. 


“ A rivederci, then,’* said 
Adrianis. 

But he lingered a moment. 

“ It will not be fair to you,” 
he said, “ for me to take the 
credit of having found this 
necklace.” 

“ Whatever honor there may 
be in the salvage I cede it, I tell 
you, willingly.” 

“Of course I shall tell her 
that it was you.” 

“ There is no need to do so ; 
I am not a squire of dames. 
She will prefer a Sicilian Prince 
to a plain man of science. 
However, you must find the 
lady first. The true owner 
lies under some mossgrown 
slab in some chapel crypt, no 
doubt.” 




37 


“ Why will you speak of 
death? I hate it.” 

“ Hate it as you may it will 
overtake you. Alexander hated 
it, but still ! When we shall 
have found the secret of life we 
ma y perhaps find the antidote 
to death. But that time is not 
yet.” 

He looked at his companion 
as he spoke, and thought what 
he did not speak : 

“ Yes ; strong as you are, and 
young as you are, and fortunate 
as you are, you too will die like 
the pauper and the cripple and 
the beggar ! ” 

The reflection gratified him ; 
for of the youth, of the beauty, 
of the fortune, he was envious, 
and with all his scorn of higher 


33 


Gorin. 


intellect he despised the child- 
like, happy, amorous tempera- 
ment, and the uncultured mind 
which went with them. 

“If I had only his wealth,” 
he thought often. “ Or if he 
only had my knowledge ! ” 

“ When we shall have pene- 
trated the secret of life we shall 
perhaps be able to defy death,” 
repeated Adrianis. “ What use 
would that be? You would 
soon have the world so full 
that there would be no stand- 
ing room ; and what would you 
do with the choking multi- 
tudes ? ” 

“ I never knew you so logi- 
cal,” said the elder man, con- 
temptuously. “ But have no 
fear. We are far enough off the 


{Toxin* 


39 


discovery ; when it is made it 
will remain in the hands of the 
wise. The immortality of fools 
will never be contemplated by 
science.’' 

“ The wise will not refuse to 
sell the secret to the wealthy 
fools,” thought his companion, 
but he forebore to say so. He 
was generous of temper, and 
knew that his companion had 
both wisdom and poverty. 

A few seconds later the splash 
of the canal water beneath the 
balcony told the other that the 
gondola was moving. 

** What a child ! ” thought 
Darner, with impatient con- 
tempt ; he turned up the light 
of his reading lamp, opened a 
number of the French Journal 


40 


Goiln. 


de Physiologie, and began to 
read, not heeding the beauty of 
the moonlit marbles of the 
Salvatore in front of him, or 
listening to the song from 
Mignon which a sweet-voiced 
lad was singing in a boat below. 
He read on thus in solitude for 
three hours ; the great tapes- 
tried and gilded room behind 
him, the gliding water below ; 
the beautiful church in front of 
his balcony, the laughter, the 
music, the swish of oars, the 
thrill of lutes and guitars, all 
the evening movement on the 
canal as the crowds went to and 
fro the Piazza, not disturbing 
him from his studies of which 
every now and then he made a 
note in pencil in a pocketbook. 


Goritn 


41 


It was twelve o’clock when, 
into the empty brilliantly 
lighted room, Adrianis entered 
and came across it to where 
Darner sat on the balcony. 

“ I have found her ! ” he said, 
with joyous triumph. The 
moonlight shone on his dark, 
starry eyes, his laughing mouth, 
his tall figure, full of grace and 
strength like the form of the 
Greek Hermes in the Vati- 
can. 

Darner laid aside his papers 
with impatience. 

“ And she has welcomed you, 
apparently ? It is midnight, 
and you look victorious.” 

Adrianis made a gesture of 
vexed protestation. 

“ Pray do not suspect such 


42 


Goxln. 


things. I sent in my card and 
begged her major-domo to say 
that I had found her necklace. 
She sent word for me to go up- 
stairs that she might thank me. 
Of course my name was known 
to her. She had a duenna with 
her. It was all solemn and 
correct. She was enchanted to 
find her necklace. It was an 
heirloom which Zaranegra gave 
her. He was killed in a duel, 
as I told you, two years ago. 
She is very beautiful and looks 
twenty years old, even less. I 
was very honest ; I told her that 
an Englishman who was travel- 
ling with me had enjoyed the 
honor of finding the opals; and 
she wishes to see you to- 
morrow. I promised to take 


Gorin. 


43 


you in prima sera ; you surely 
ought to be grateful.” 

Damer shrugged his shoul- 
ders and looked regretfully at 
his papers and pencils. 

“Women only disturb one,” 
he said, ungraciously. 

Adrianis laughed. 

“ It is that disturbance which 
perfumes our life and shakes 
the rose leaves over it. But I 
remember, to attract you a 
woman must be lying, dead or 
alive, on an operating-table.” 

“ Alive by preference,” said 
Damer. “The dead are little 
use to us; their nervous system 
is still, like a stopped clock.” 

“ A creature must suffer to 
interest you ? ” 

“ Certainly.” 


44 


Goiin* 


Adrianis shuddered slightly. 

“ Why did you save me ? ” 

Damer smiled. 

“ My dear prince, it is my 
duty to save when I can. I 
should have preferred to let 
you alone, and study your nat- 
ural powers of resistance in 
conflict with the destruction 
which was menacing them. 
But I could not follow my 
preferences. I was called in to 
assist your natural powers by 
affording them artificial resist- 
ance ; and I was bound to do 
so.” 

Adrianis made a grimace 
which signified disappointment 
and distaste. 

“ If my mother knew you 
looked at it in that way she 


Gorin. 


45 


would not adore you, my 
friend, as she does.” 

“ The princess exaggerates,” 
said Damer, putting out his 
lamp. “ Mothers always do ; I 
do not think I ever said any- 
thing to lead her to deceive 
herself with regard to me. She 
knows what my interests and 
my pursuits are.” 

“ But,” said Adrianis, wist- 
fully, “ surely there are many 
men of science, many surgeons, 
whose desire is to console, to 
amend, who care for the poor 
human material on which they 
work? ” 

“ There are some,” replied 
Damer ; “ but they are not in 
the front ranks of their profes- 


46 


Goitn. 


sion, nor will science ever owe 
much to them.” 

The young man was silent ; 
he felt in his moral nature as 
he had sometimes felt in his 
physical, when a chill icy wind 
had risen and passed through 
the sunshine of a balmy day. 
He shook off the impression 
with the mutability of a happy 
temper. 

“ Eh via!” he cried. “You 
make me feel cold in the mar- 
row of my bones. Good-night. 
I am tired, and I go to dream 
of the lady of the opals. Like 
you, I prefer living women to 
dead ones, but I do not wish 
them to suffer. I wish them 
to enjoy — for my sake and their 
own ! ” 


Goxln. 


47 


Damer, left alone, relit his 
lamp, took up his papers and 
books, went into the room, for 
the night was fresh, and re- 
mained reading and writing un- 
til daybreak. 


VI. 


Veronica Zaranegra was 
charmed to find her necklace ; 
she was still more charmed to 
find an adventure through it. 

This beautiful youth with his 
starry eyes, soft with admira- 
tion, who had brought her back 
the opals, looked like a knight 
out of fairyland. She was 
young; she was weary of the 
seclusion of her widowhood ; 
she was kept in close constraint 
by those who had authority 
over her ; she was ready to re- 
enter life in its enjoyments, its 
amusements, its affections, its 



SHE WAS LIKE A PICTURE OF CATERIANA CORNARO.” 

— Page 49. 



Goxtn. 


49 


desires. The tragic end of 
her husband had impressed and 
saddened her, but she had re- 
covered from its shock. The 
marriage had been arranged by 
their respective families, and 
the hearts of neither had been 
consulted. Zaranegra, however, 
had become much in love with 
her, and had left her all which 
it was in his power to leave, 
and that had been much. 

She was like a picture of Ca- 
terina Cornaro as she stood on 
the balcony of her house ; her 
golden hair was enclosed in 
a pearl-sown net, she had some 
crimson carnations at her 
throat, and her cloak of red 
satin lined with sables lay on 
her shoulders and fell to her 


52 


Gorin. 


in g; I use my eyes. Most 
people do not use theirs.” 

She looked at him curiously 
and laughed. The answer 
seemed to her very droll. 

“ Everybody sees except the 
blind,” she said, somewhat 
puzzled. 

“And the purblind,” added 
Darner. 

She did not catch his mean- 
ing. She turned from him a 
little impatiently and addressed 
Adrianis. 

She spoke of music. Adri- 
anis was accomplished in that 
art ; there was a mandoline 
lying on the grand piano ; he 
took it up and sang to it a Si- 
cilian love-song ; she took it 
from him and sang Venetian 


XToiin* 


S3 


barcarolle and stornelli ; then 
they sang together, and their 
clear, youthful voices blent 
melodiously. People passing 
on the canal stopped their gon- 
dolas under the balcony to 
listen ; some Venetian profes- 
sional musicians in a boat be- 
low applauded. Darner sat in 
the shadow, and listened, and 
looked at them. Music said 
little or nothing to him ; he 
had scarcely any comprehen- 
sion of it ; but something in 
the sound of those blended 
voices touched a chord in his 
nature ; made him feel vaguely 
sad, restlessly desirous, fool- 
ishly irritated. The light fell 
on the handsome head of the 
youth, on the carnations at the 


54 


Coiln. 


lady’s throat, on the rings on 
their hands, which touched as 
they took the mandoline one 
from the other ; behind them 
were the open casement, the 
balcony with its white flowers, 
the lighted frontage of a palace 
on the opposite side of the 
canal. 

As they ceased to sing the 
people below on the water ap- 
plauded again, and cried, 
“ Brava ! brava ! Bis, bis ! ” 

Adrianis laughed and rose, 
and, going out on to the bal- 
cony, threw some money to the 
boatload of ambulant musicians 
who had left off their playing 
and singing to listen. 

“ Those artists below are 
very kind to us amateurs,” 


aoiin, 


55 


said Adrianis, with a little 
branch of spiraea in his hand, 
which he proceeded to fasten 
in his button-hole as he came 
back into the light of the room. 

“You are more than an am- 
ateur.” 

“ Oh, all Sicilians sing. The 
syrens teach us.” 

“ Prince Adrianis is a poet,” 
said Darner, with a harsh tone 
in his voice. 

“ Who never wrote a verse,’ 
said Adrianis, as he handed a 
cup of coffee to his hostess. 

“ Shut the windows,” said 
the Countess Zaranegra to her 
servants, who brought on 
coffee and wine, lemonade and 
syrups. 

Through the closed windows 


54 


Goiin* 


lady’s throat, on the rings on 
their hands, which touched as 
they took the mandoline one 
from the other ; behind them 
were the open casement, the 
balcony with its white flowers, 
the lighted frontage of a palace 
on the opposite side of the 
canal. 

As they ceased to sing the 
people below on the water ap- 
plauded again, and cried, 
“ Brava ! brava ! Bis, bis ! ” 

Adrianis laughed and rose, 
and, going out on to the bal- 
cony, threw some money to the 
boatload of ambulant musicians 
who had left off their playing 
and singing to listen. 

“ Those artists below are 
very kind to us amateurs,” 


{Toxin. 


55 


said Adrianis, with a little 
branch of spiraea in his hand, 
which he proceeded to . fasten 
in his button-hole as he came 
back into the light of the room. 

“ You are more than an am- 
ateur.’’ 

“ Oh, all Sicilians sing. The 
syrens teach us.” 

“ Prince Adrianis is a poet,” 
said Darner, with a harsh tone 
in his voice. 

“ Who never wrote a verse,’ 
said Adrianis, as he handed a 
cup of coffee to his hostess. 

“ Shut the windows,” said 
the Countess Zaranegra to her 
servants, who brought on 
coffee and wine, lemonade and 
syrups. 

Through the closed windows 


56 


Sorta . 


the sound of a chorus sung by 
the strolling singers below 
came faintly and muffled into 
the room ; the lamplight shone 
on the white spray of the 
spiraea in his coat, which looked 
like a crystal of snow. 

“ If I had found the opals I 
should have been inspired by 
them/’ he added. “ As it is, I 
am dumb and unhappy.” 

Veronica Zaranegra smiled. 

“ If you are dumb, so was 
Orpheus.” 

“ And if you are unhappy so 
was Prince Fortunatus,” added 
Darner. “You are only sad 
out of wantonness because the 
gods have given you too many 
gifts.” 


Goiim 


57 

“ Or because he has stolen a 
piece of spiraea.” 

“ I may keep my theft ? ” 
asked Adrianis. 

“Yes. For you brought 
back the opals, though you did 
not find them.” 

Soon after they both took 
their leave of her and went 
down to the waiting gondola. 
The boatload of musicians 
had drifted upwards towards 
Rialto, the colors of their pa- 
per lanterns glowing through 
the dark. There was no moon. 
They did not speak to each 
other in the few minutes which 
carried them to their hotel. 
When they reached it they 
parted with a brief good-night 
Neither asked the other what 


58 


Goifrn 


his impressions of the lady, 
and of the evening, had been. 

The night was dark. Mists 
obscured the stars. The lights 
at the Dogana and of the 
lamps along the Schiavone 
were shining brightly, and 
many other lights gleamed here 
and there, where they shone in 
gondolas, or boats, or at the 
mast-heads of vessels anchored 
in the dock of St. Mark. The 
hour was still early ; eleven 
o’clock and the canal was not 
yet deserted. There was the 
liquid sound of parting water 
as people went to and fro on 
its surface. At such an hour 
Venice is still what it was in 
the days of Paul Veronese, or 
of Virginia di Leyva. 


(Toxin. 


59 


Adrianis sat by the sea-wall 
of the hotel garden and looked 
absently down the dark expanse 
studded with lights like di- 
amonds, and thought exclu- 
sively of the woman he had 
quitted. He saw her golden 
hair shining in the lamplight, 
the red of the knot of carnations 
at her throat, the slender, jew- 
elled hand on the mandoline, 
the smiling, rose-like mouth ; 
he heard the clear, fresh, un- 
strained voice rising and falling 
with his own, whilst her eyes 
smiled and her eyes met his. 

“ Stones of sorrow ! stones of 
sorrow ! ” he thought. “ No, 
no. They shall be jewels of 
joy to me, to her. Love is born 
of a glance, of a note, of a mur- 


6o 


Gorin. 


mur. It is the wonder flower 
of life. It blossoms full-grown 
in an instant. It needs neither 
time nor reflection.” 

His heart beat gladly in him : 
his nerves were thrilled and 
throbbing ; his welcome of a 
new and profound emotion was 
without fear. 

In such a mood the merest 
trifle has eloquence. He was 
sorry when he looked down on 
the spray of spiraea in his coat, 
and saw that all the little starry 
flowers of it had fallen off, and 
vanished, as though it had in- 
deed been snow which had 
melted at a breath of scirocco. 


VII. 


Two weeks passed, and 
brought the month of May. 
On the many island banks long 
sprays of dog-rose and honey- 
suckle hung down over the 
water, and the narrow canals 
which ran through them were 
tunnels of blossom and verdure ; 
on the sunny shallows thou- 
sands of white-winged gulls were 
fishing and bathing all the day 
long ; and in the churches 
azaleas and lilies and arums 
were grouped round the altars 
under the dark-winged angels 
of Tintoretto and the golden- 
haired cherubim of Tiepolo. 


62 


Goim. 


The nights were still cold but 
the days were warm, were at 
noontide even hot ; and Ver- 
onica Zaranegra passed almost 
all her time on the water. 
There was a little orchard island 
which belonged to the family, 
out beyond Mazzorbo ; in the 
previous century a small sum- 
merhouse or pavilion, with a 
red-tiled dome like a beehive, 
had been erected on it and was 
still there ; a pretty toy still, 
though its frescoed walls were 
faded and its marble landing 
steps eaten away by the inces- 
sant washing of the sea ; it was 
embowered in peach and plum 
and pear trees, and looked west- 
ward. Here she came often for 
breakfast, or for afternoon tea, 


Kotin. 


63 


or the evening merenda of 
fruit sweetmeats and wine, and 
here she was often accompanied 
by a gay party of Venetians of 
her own years and by the two 
strangers who had given her 
back her opals. The weather 
was rainless and radiant ; the 
gondolas glided like swallows 
over the lagoons ; she was rich, 
childlike, fond of pleasure ; she 
tried to bring back the life of 
the eighteenth century, and 
amused herself with reviving its 
customs, its costumes, its come- 
dies, as they had been before the 
storms of revolution and the 
smoke of war had rolled over 
the Alps, and Arcole and Mar- 
engo had silenced the laugh- 
ter of Italy. 


64 


Goiin. 


“ I wish I had lived when this 
collar was new,” she said, when 
her jewellers returned to her the 
opals restored to their pristine 
brilliancy. “ Life in V enice was 
one long festa then ; I have 
read of it. It was all masque, 
and serenade, and courtship, 
and magnificence. People were 
not philosophical about life, 
then ; they lived. Nina Zara- 
negra was a beautiful woman. 
They have her portrait in the 
Bell Arte. She holds a rose 
to her lips and laughs. She 
was killed by her husband for 
an amour. She had these opals 
on her throat when he drove 
the stiletto through it. At least 
so Carlo used to tell me. But 
perhaps it was not true.” 


Goiin. 


6s 


“Do not wear them,” said 
Adrianis, to whom she was 
speaking. “ Do not wear them 
if they are blood-stained. You 
know they are stones of sor- 
row.” 

She laughed. 

“You Sicilians are super- 
stitious. We northerners are 
not. I like to wear them for 
that very reason of their 
tragedy.” 

She took up the necklace and 
clasped it round her throat ; 
some tendrils of her hair caught 
in the clasp ; she gave an in- 
voluntary little cry of pain. 
Adrianis hastened to release her 
hair from the clasp. His hand 
trembled ; their eyes met, and 
said much to each other. 


66 


aoita. 


Damer, who was near, drew 
nearer, 

“ I have seen the portrait in 
the Belle Arte,” he said. “ The 
Countess Nina symbolizes si- 
lence with her rose, but she 
has the face of a woman who 
would not keep even her own 
secrets. Indeed a charming 
woman is always ‘ bavarde 
comme les pies,' as the French 
say.” 

“You despise women,” said 
Veronica Zaranegra, with vexa- 
tion. 

“Oh, no. But I should not 
give them my confidence any 
more than I should give a deli- 
cate scientific instrument to a 
child.” 


£oim. 67 

“ Not even to a woman whom 
you loved ? ” 

“ Still less to a. woman whom 
I loved.” 

“ You are a mysterious sage,” 
she said, a little impatiently. 
“You regard us as if we were 
children indeed, incapable of 
any comprehension.” 

Darner did not dispute the 
accusation. 

“ Did I hear you say,” he 
asked, “ that the lovely original 
of that portrait was murdered 
by her husband ? ” 

“ Yes, and he would not even 
allow her Christian burial, but 
had her body carried out on 
to the Orfano canal, and thrown 
into the water, with a great 
stone tied to her feet.” 


68 


Gorin* 


“ He was primitive,” said 
Damer. “Those are rough, 
rude ways of vengeance.” 

“ What would you have 
done ? ” 

“ I hardly know ; but I 
should not have so stupidly 
wasted such a beautiful organ- 
ism. Besides the end was too 
swift to be any great punish- 
ment.” 

She was silent, looking at 
him with that mixture of cu- 
riosity, interest, and vague ap- 
prehension which he always 
aroused in her. She was not 
very intelligent, but she had 
quick susceptibilities; there 
was that in him which alarmed 
them and yet fascinated them. 

“He awes me,” she said la- 


Gorin. 


69 


ter in the day to Adrianis. 
“ So often one cannot fol- 
low his meaning, but one al- 
ways feels his reserve of 
power.” 

It was a grave speech for a 
light-hearted lover of pleasure. 
Adrianis heard it with vexa- 
tion, but he was loyal to the 
man who, as he considered, 
had saved his life. 

“ He is a person of great in- 
tellect,” he answered ; “ we are 
pigmies beside him. But ” 

“ But what ? ” 

“ He used his brains to cure 
my body. So I must not dis- 
pute the virtue of his use of 
them. Yet sometimes I fancy 
that he has no heart. I think 
all the forces in him have only 


70 


Goiin, 


nourished his mind, which is 
immense. But his heart, per- 
haps, has withered away, get- 
ting no nourishment. He 
would say I talk nonsense ; but 
I think you will understand 
what I mean.” 

“ I think I understand,” said 
Veronica, thoughtfully. 

She had thought very little 
in her careless young life ; she 
had begun to think more since 
these two men had come into 
it. 

“ Adrianis merits better 
treatment than you give him,” 
said her duenna to her that 
day. “ How long will you 
keep him in suspense? You 
ought to remember ‘ what hell 
it is in waiting to abide.’ ” 


Goiin, 


71 


“A hell?” said Veronica, 
with the color in her face. 
“ You mean a paradise ! ” 

“ A fool’s paradise, I fear,” 
replied the elder woman. 
“ And what does that other 
man do here ? He told me he 
was due at some university in 
Germany.” 

“ How can I tell why either 
of them stays ? ” said Veronica, 
disingenuously as her con- 
science told her. “ Venice al- 
lures many people, especially 
in her spring season.” 

“ So does a woman in her 
spring,” said the elder lady, 
drily, with an impatient gest- 
ure. 

“You are angry with me,” 
said Veronica, mournfully. 


72 


ttoiin, 


‘‘No my dear. It is as use- 
less to be angry with you as to 
be angry with a young cat be- 
cause in its gambols it breaks a 
vase of which it knows noth- 
ing of the preciousness.” 

Veronica Zaranegra did not 
resent or reply. She knew the 
vase was precious ; she did not 
mean to break it ; but she 
wanted to be free awhile longer. 
Mutual love was sweet, but it 
was not freedom. And what 
she felt ashamed of was a cer- 
tain reluctance which moved 
her to allow Darner to see or 
know that she loved a man of 
so little intellectual force as 
Adrianis, a man who had noth- 
ing but his physical beauty 


Zoxin. 


73 


and his gay, glad temper and 
kind heart. 

“ Do you want nothing more 
than these ? ” the gaze of Da- 
rner seemed in her imagination 
to say to her. 

She was angered with her- 
self for thinking of him or of 
his opinion ; he was not of her 
world or of her station ; he 
was a professional man, a 
worker, a teacher; natural 
pride of lineage and habit 
made her regard him as in no 
way privileged to be considered 
by her. And yet she could not 
help being influenced by that 
disdain of the mental powers of 
others which he had never ut- 
tered, but which he continually 
showed. Indecision is the 


74 


Goxfn. 


greatest bane of women ; ob- 
stinacy costs them much, but 
indecision costs them more. 
The will of Veronica flickered 
like a candle in the wind, 
veered hither and thither like a 
fallen leaf in a gust of wind 
and rain. 

Adrianis was delightful to 
her ; his beauty, his gaiety, and 
his homage were all sympa- 
thetic to her. She knew that 
he loved her, but she prevented 
him telling her so ; she liked 
her lately acquired liberty ; she 
did not want a declaration 
which would force her to de- 
cide in one way or another 
what to do with her future. 
And she was affected without 
being aware of it by the 


SToxtn. 


75 


scarcely disguised contempt 
which his companion had for 
him. It was seldom outspoken, 
but it was visible in every 
word of Darner, in every glance. 

“ He is beautiful, yes,” he 
said once to her. “ So is an 
animal.” 

“ Do you not like animals?” 

“ I do not like or dislike 
them. The geologist does not 
like or dislike the stones he 
breaks up, the metallurgist 
does not like or dislike the ore 
he fuses.” 

She did not venture to ask 
him what he meant ; she had a 
vague conception of his mean- 
ing, and it gave her a chill as 
such replies gave to Adrianis : 
a chill such as the north wind. 


76 aoifn. 

when it comes down from the 
first snows on the Dolomite 
peaks, gives to the honeysuckle 
flowers hanging over the sea- 
walls. She was not clever or 
much educated, but she had 
seen a good deal of the world, 
and she had heard men talk of 
science, of its pretensions and 
its methods, its self-worship 
and its tyrannies. She had 
put her rosy fingers in her ears 
and run away when they had 
so spoken, but some things she 
had heard and now remem- 
bered. 

“You are what they call a 
physiologist?” she said once, 
suddenly. 

“ I am,” replied Darner. 

She looked at him under her 


Zoxin. 


77 


long silky lashes as a child 
looks at what it fears in the 
dusk of a fading day. He at- 
tracted her and repelled her, as 
when she had herself been a 
little child she had been at 
once charmed and frightened 
by the great ghostly figures on 
the tapestries, and the white 
and grey busts of gods and 
sages on the grand staircase of 
her father’s house in the Tren- 
tino. She would have liked to 
ask him many things, things of 
mystery and of horror, but she 
was afraid. After all, how 
much better were the sea, the 
sunshine, the dog-rose, the bar- 
carolle, the laughter, the lute ! 

She turned to Adrianis, who 
at that moment came along the 


78 lloiixu 

sands of the beach, his hands 
filled with spoils from the blos- 
soming hedges ; turned to him 
as when, a little child on the 
staircase in the dusk, she had 
run to reach the shelter of a 
warmed and lighted room. He 
was of her own country, her 
own age, her own tempera- 
ment ; he carried about him a 
sense of gladness, an atmos- 
phere of youth ; he was of her 
own rank; he was as rich as 
she, and richer. There was no 
leaven of self-seeking in the 
love he bore her; the passion 
she had roused in him was 
pure of any alloy ; it was the 
love of the poets and the 
singers. If she accepted it, her 
path, from youth to age, would 


Goiin. 


79 


be like one of those flowering 
meadows of his own Sicily 
which fill the cloudless day 
with perfume. 

She knew that ; her foot was 
ready to tread the narcissus- 
filled grass, but by an unac- 
countable indecision and ca- 
price she would not let him 
invite her thither. She con- 
tinually evaded or eluded the 
final words which would have 
united them or parted them. 

Again and again, when that 
moment of decision could not 
have been postponed, the som- 
bre shadow of Darner had ap- 
peared, as in the moment when 
the clasp of the necklace had 
been entangled in the little 
curls at the back of her throat. 


8o 


XToiin. 


It might be chance, it might 
be premeditation ; but he was 
always there in those moments 
when the heart of Adrianis 
leaped to his eyes and lips and 
called to hers. 


VIII. 

In the evening she was 
usually at home. She did not 
as yet go to balls or theatres ; 
the aristocratic society of 
Venice flocked to her rooms, 
and what was best in the for- 
eign element. In the evenings 
neither Adrianis nor Darner 
saw her alone ; but in the day- 
time, on the island or in the 
water excursions, sometimes 
one or the other was beside 
her for a few minutes with no 
listener near. 

Adrianis eagerly sought such 
occasions ; Darner never seemed 


82 


{Toxin. 


to seek them. He was often 
in her palace and on her island, 
but appeared to be so chiefly 
because he went where Adri- 
anis went. No one could have 
told that he took pleasure in 
doing so. 

But Adrianis, somewhat sur- 
prised at his lingering so long, 
thought to himself : “ He was 
to be in Gottenberg by the 
ioth of May, and it is now the 
23rd.” 

“ Have you given up your 
appointment ? ” he asked once, 
directly. 

Darner merely answered, 
“No.” He did not offer any 
explanation ; but he continued 
to stay on in Venice, though 
he had removed from the fine 


Goitn. 


83 


apartments occupied by his 
friend to a house on the Fon- 
damenti Nuovi, where he had 
hired two chambers. 

Adrianis, who was very gen- 
erous and had always a grateful 
and uneasy sense of unrepaid 
obligation, vainly urged him to 
remain in his hotel. But Da- 
rner somewhat rudely, refused. 

“ I cannot pursue any studies 
there,” he replied. 

The house he had chosen 
was obscure and uninviting, 
standing amidst the clang of 
coppersmiths’ hammers and the 
stench of iron-foundries in 
what was once the most patri- 
cian and beautiful garden-quar- 
ter of Venice, but which is now 
befouled, blackened, filled with 


84 


Gorin. 


smoke, and clamor, and vile- 
ness, where once the rose-ter- 
races and the clematis-covered 
pergole ran down to the la- 
goon, and the marble stairs 
were white as snow under silken 
awnings. 

“What do you do there?” 
Veronica Zaranegra wished to 
ask him ; but she never did so ; 
she felt vaguely afraid as a 
woman of the Middle Age 
would have feared to ask a 
magician what he did with his 
alembics and his spheres. 

Although the eyes of lovers 
are proverbially washed by the 
collyrium of jealousy, those of 
Adrianis were blind to the pas- 
sion which Darner, like him- 
self, had conceived. The re- 


Goiln. 


85 


serve and power of self-restraint 
in Darner were extreme, and 
served to screen his secret from 
the not very discerning mind 
of his companion. Moreover, 
the pride of race which was 
born and bred in Adrianis ren- 
dered it impossible for him to 
suspect that he possessed a 
rival in one who was, however 
mentally superior, so far so- 
cially inferior, to himself and to 
the woman he loved. 

That a man who was going 
to receive a stipend as a 
teacher in a German university 
could lift his eyes to Veronica 
Zaranegra would have seemed 
wholly impossible to one who 
had been reared in patrician 
and conservative tenets. He 


86 


Zoxin. 


never noticed the fires which 
slumbered in the cold wide- 
opened eyes of his friend and 
monitor. He never observed 
how frequently Darner watched 
him and her when they were 
together, listened from afar to 
their conversation, and invari- 
ably interrupted them at any 
moment when their words 
verged on more tender or 
familiar themes. He was him- 
self tenderly, passionately, ro- 
mantically enamored ; his tem- 
per was full of a romance to 
which he could not often give 
adequate expression ; his love 
for her had the timidity of all 
sincere and nascent passion ; he 
was pained and chafed by the 
manner in which she avoided 


Goiitu 


37 


his definite declaration of it, 
but he did not for a moment 
trace it to its right cause, the 
magnetic influence which the 
Englishman had upon her, the 
hesitation which was given her 
by vague hypnotic suggestion. 
If any looker-on had warned 
him, he would have laughed and 
said that the days of magic 
were past. 

He himself only counted 
time by the hours which 
brought him into her presence 
on the water, on the island, or 
in the evening receptions in the 
palace. He made water-festi- 
vals and pleasure-cruises to 
please her ; he had sent for his 
own sailing yacht from Pa- 
lermo. The long, light days of 


88 


{Toxin. 


late spring and earliest summer 
passed in a series of ingenious 
amusements of which the sole 
scope was to obtain a smile 
from her. Often she did smile, 
the radiance of youth and of a 
woman’s willingness to be wor- 
shipped shining on her fair 
countenance as the sun shone 
on the sea. Sometimes also 
the smile ceased suddenly 
when, from a distance, her eyes 
encountered those of Darner. 

All that was most delightful 
in life offered itself to her in 
the homage of Adrianis: his 
mother’s welcome, his southern 
clime, his great love, his in- 
finite tenderness and sweetness 
of temper, his great physical 
beauty. She longed to accept 


Zoxin. 


89 


these great gifts ; she longed to 
feel his arms folded about her 
and his cheek against hers ; and 
yet she hesitated, she delayed, 
she avoided, because in the eyes 
of another man, whom she dis- 
liked and feared, she read 
mockery, disdain, and superior- 
ity. She could not have said 
what it was that she felt any 
more than the young spaniel 
could tell what moves it as it 
looks up into human eyes, and 
reads authority in them, and 
crouches, trembling. 

Why did he stay here ? she 
asked herself, this cold, still, 
irresponsive man, who had 
nothing in him which was not 
alien to the youthful and 
pleasure-loving society in which 


90 


ZFoiln. 


he found himself, and who was 
by his own admission already 
overdue at the university to 
which he had been appointed. 

“ Are you not losing time ? ” 
she said once to him ; “ we are 
so frivolous, so ignorant, so un- 
like you.” 

“ I never lose time,” replied 
Darner. “ An amoeba in a pool 
on the sand is companion 
enough for me.” 

Seeing that she had no idea 
of what he meant, he added : 

“ A man of science is like an 
artist ; his art is everywhere, 
wherever natural forms ex- 
ist.” 

“ Or like a sportsman,” said 
Adrianis, who was listening; 
“ his sport is everywhere, where- 


£oxfn. 


9 1 


ever there are livings things to 
kill.” 

“ Put it so if you please/' 
said Darner. But he was 
annoyed ; he disliked being 
answered intelligently and sar- 
castically by one whom he 
considered a fool. Whatever 
Adrianis said irritated him, 
though it was almost perpet- 
ually courteous and simple, as 
was the nature of the speaker. 

Darner read the young man’s 
heart like an open book and he 
knew that it was wholly filled 
with the image of Veronica. 
He had never liked Adrianis; 
he had no liking for youth or 
for physical beauty, or for kind- 
liness and sweetness and simpli- 
city of character. Such quali- 


aoxin. 


92 

ties were not in tune with him ; 
they were no more to him than 
the soft, thick fur of the cat 
in his laboratory, which he 
stripped off her body that he 
might lay bare her spinal cord ; 
the pretty, warm skin was 
nothing to science — no more 
than was the pain of the bared 
nerves. 

He had saved the life of 
Adrianis because it had in- 
terested and recompensed him 
to do so ; he had travelled with 
him for a year because it suited 
him financially to do so ; but he 
had never liked him, he had 
never been touched by any one 
of the many generous and deli- 
cate acts of the young man, nor 
by the trust which the mother 


Goiin. 


93 


of Adrianis continually ex- 
pressed in her letters to him- 
self. Where jealousy sits on 
the threshold of the soul, good- 
ness and kindness and faith 
knock in vain for admittance. 
Envy is hatred in embryo ; 
and only waits in the womb of 
time for birth. 


IX. 


One day Veronica asked 
him to go and see an old ser- 
vant of the Zaranegra house- 
hold who was very ill and in 
hospital ; they had begged him 
not to go to the hospital, but 
he had wished to do so, and 
had been allowed to fulfil his 
wish. Darner went to visit him. 
He found the man at death’s 
door with cancer of the food and 
air passages. 

“ If he be notoperated on he 
will die in a week,” said the 
Englishman. 

None of the hospital sur- 


Goiin. 


95 


geons dared perform such an 
operation. 

“ I will operate if you con- 
sent, M said Damer. 

The surgeons acquiesced. 

“ Will Biancon recover ? ” 
asked Veronica, when he re- 
turned and told her on what 
they had decided. 

“ In his present state he 
cannot live a week,” replied 
Damer, evasively. 

“ Does he wish for the opera- 
tion ? ” 

“ He can be no judge. He 
cannot know his own condition. 
He cannot take his own prog- 
nosis.” 

“ But it will be frightful 
suffering.” 

“ He will be under anaes- 


thetics.” 


9 6 


Goxfn. 


“ But will he recover ? ” 

“ Madame, I am not the 
master of Fate.’* 

“ But what is probable ? ” 

“ What is certain is that the 
man will die if left as he is.” 

He performed the operation 
next day. The man ceased to 
breathe as it was ended ; the 
shock to the nervous system 
had killed him. 

When she heard that he was 
dead she burst into tears. 

“ Oh ! why, oh ! why,” she 
said passionately to Darner, 
later in the day : “ why, if you 
knew he must die, did you tor- 
ture him in his last mo- 
ments ? ” 

“ I gave him a chance,” he 
replied, indifferently. “ Any- 


{Toxin. 


97 


how he would never have 
survived the operation more 
than a few weeks.” 

“ Why did you torture him 
with it then?” said Veronica.* 
indignantly. 

“ It was a rare, and almost 
unique, opportunity. I have 
solved by it a doubt which has- 
never been solved before, and 
never could have been without 
a human subject.” 

She shrank from him in 
horror. 

“You are a wicked man!” 
she said, faintly. “ Oh, how I 
wish, how I wish I had never 
asked you to see my poor 
Biancon ! He might have 
lived ! ” 


“ He would most certainly 


9 8 


Goiin. 


bave died,” said Damer, un- 
moved. “ The life of a man at 
sixty is not an especially valu- 
able thing, and I believe he did 
nothing all his life except pol- 
ish your palace floors with 
beeswax or oil ; I forget which 
it is they use in Venice.” 

She looked at him with a 
mixture of horror and fear. 

“ But you have killed him ! 
— and you can jest.” 

“ I did not kill him. His 
disease killed him,” replied Da- 
mer, with calm indifference. 
“ And his end has been a 
source of knowledge. I should 
wish my own end to be as fruit- 
ful.” 

She shuddered, and motioned 
to him to leave her. 


£oiin. 


99 


“ Go away, go away, you 
have no heart, and no con- 
science.” 

Damer smiled slightly. 

“ I have a scientific con- 
science ; it is as good as a moral 
one, and does better work.” 

“ Why did you bring that 
man to Venice?” she said to 
Adrianis some hours later. 
“ He has killed my poor Bi- 
ancon, and he cares nothing.” 

“Why do you receive him?” 
said Adrianis, feeling the re- 
proach unjust. “Cease to re- 
ceive him. That is very sim- 
ple. If you banish him he is 
proud ; he will not persist.” 

“ He would not perhaps per- 
sist ; but he would be re- 
venged,” she thought, but she 


oo 


Goxln. 


did not say so. Though her 
life was short, she had learned 
in it that men are like detona- 
tors which you cannot throw 
against each other without ex- 
plosion. 

Adrianis began to desire the 
exile of his companion, though 
his loyalty withheld him from 
trying to obtain it by any un- 
fair means or unjust attack. 
He was mortified and dis- 
quieted. Why had he not had 
patience, and waited to carry 
the opals to the Ca’ Zaranegra 
until the Englishman had been 
safe on the sea on his way to 
Trieste? He began to per- 
ceive that Darner had an influ- 
ence on the Countess Veronica 
which was contrary to his own, 


Zoiin. 


101 


and adverse to his interests. 
He did not attach importance 
to it, because he saw that it 
was purely intellectual ; but he 
would have preferred that it 
had not existed. So would she. 

It was such an influence as 
the confessor obtains over the 
devotee ; against which hus- 
band, lover, children, all natural 
ties, struggle altogether in vain. 

It is not love ; it is alien to 
love, but it is frequently 
stronger than love, and casts 
down the winged god maimed 
and helpless. 

“ Pierres de malheur ! Pier- 
res de malheur ! ” she said, as 
she looked at the opals that 
night. “ Why did you bring 
that cruel man into my life ? ” 


102 


{Toxin. 


She might banish him as 
Adrianis had said, but she felt 
that she would never have 
courage to do it. Darner awed 
her. She felt something of 
what the poor women in the 
Salpetriere had felt, when he 
had hypnotized them, and 
made them believe that they 
clasped their hands on red-hot 
iron, or were being dragged by 
ropes to the scaffold. She 
strove to resist and conquer 
the impression, but she was sub- 
jugated by it against her will. 

She buried her poor old ser- 
vant that night, and followed 
the coffin in its gondola in her 
own, with her men in mourn- 
ing and the torches burning at 
the prow. 


{Toxin. 103 

From the casement of his 
high tower on the north of the 
city, which looked over the la- 
goon towards that island which 
is now the cemetery of Venice, 
with its tall mosque-like Cam- 
panile and its high sea-walls, 
Darner saw and recognized her 
on that errand of respect to 
the humble dead. He saw also 
the long-boat of the yacht of 
Adrianis, laden with flowers, 
following her gondola at a little 
distance, as though its owner 
were timid and uncertain of 
welcome. He recognized them 
both in the evening light, and 
through his binocular could 
discern their features, their 
hands, their garlands, as the 
torches flamed and the water, 


104 


Goifn. 


roughened by wind, broke 
against the black sides of her 
gondola, and the white sides of 
the boat. 

“ Two children,” he thought, 
“ made for each other, with 
their flowers and fables and 
follies ! I should do best to 
leave them together.” 

Then he shut his window and 
turned from the sight of the 
silver water, the evening skies, 
the gliding vessels. 

His work awaited him. 
Bound on a plank lay a young 
sheep-dog, which he had bought 
from a peasant of Mazzorbo 
for a franc ; he had cut its vo- 
cal chords ; in his own jar- 
gon, had rendered it aphone; 
he had then cut open its 


Gorin, 


i os 

body, and torn out its kidneys 
and pancreas ; it was living ; 
he reckoned it would live in 
its mute and unpitied agony 
for twelve hours more, — long 
enough for the experiment 
which he was about to make. 

These were the studies for 
which he had come to the 
tower on the Fondamenti. 

The clang of hammers and 
the roar of furnaces drowned 
the cries of animals which it 
was not convenient to make 
aphone ; and the people of the 
quarter were too engrossed in 
their labors to notice when he 
flung down into the water 
dead or half-dead mutilated 
creatures. 


X. 


After the death of the 
serving-man, Biancon, the name 
of the English scientist and sur- 
geon became known and re- 
vered amongst the persons of 
his own profession in Venice. 
The poor man had died cer- 
tainly from the shock to the 
nerves, but that was of small 
moment. The operation had 
been eminently successful, as 
science counts success. It had 
been admirably performed, and 
had, as he had said to Ve- 
ronica, cleared up a doubt 
which could not, without a hu- 


Goiin. 


107 


man subject, have been satis- 
factorily dissipated. His skill, 
his manual dexterity, his cour- 
age, were themes of universal 
praise, and more than one rich 
person of the Veneto entreated 
his examination, and submitted 
to his treatment. 

Adrianis saw but little of him 
in the daytime, but most even- 
ings in prima sera they met 
in the Palazzo Zaranegra. 
There Darner spoke little, but 
he spoke with effect ; and, 
when he was silent, it seemed to 
the young mistress of the 
house that his silence was odi- 
ously eloquent, for it appeared 
always to say to her : “ What a 
mindless creature you are ! 
What a mindless creature you 
love ! ” 


io8 


Gorin. 


Sometimes it seemed to her 
to say more ; to say across the 
length of the lighted, perfumed, 
flower-filled salon, “ And if I 
forbid your mutual passion ? 
If I prevent its fruition ?” 

Out of his presence she ridi- 
culed these ideas, but in his 
presence they were realities to 
her, and realities which alarmed 
and haunted her. 

“ How I wish you had never 
brought him here — oh, how I 
wish it ! ” she said once to 
Adrianis. 

They were in the Piazza 
of St. Mark ; it was late in 
the evening ; the gay summer 
crowd was all around them ; 
the band was playing ; the full 
moon was above in all her 


Goiln. 


109 


glory ; laughter and gay chat- 
ter mingled with the lapping 
of the water and the splash of 
oars. In the blaze of light 
under the colonades people 
were supping and flirting and 
jesting, as though they were 
still in the days of Goldoni. 

“Are you not a little unjust 
to me ? ” said Adrianis, gently. 
“ I could not do otherwise, in 
common honesty, than tell you 
that it was not I who had found 
your opals, and you wished to 
see and to thank the person who 
had done so.” 

“ Oh, I know ! I know ! ” she 
said, with an impatient sigh. 
“ Such things are always one’s 
own fault. But he killed Bian- 
con, and his very presence 
now is painful to me.” 


IIO 


aoiln. 


“ Tell him so.” 

“ I dare not.” 

“ Shall I tell him for you ? ” 

She looked at him with the 
wistful, alarmed gaze of a 
frightened child. 

“Oh, no, no! He would 
be offended. He might quar- 
rel with you. No ! Pray do 
not do that.” 

“ His anger has no terrors for 
me,” he said, with a smile. 
“ But you know what you 
wish is my law for silence as 
for speech.” 

“ Limonate ? Fragolone ? 
Gelate ? Confetti ? ” sang a boy, 
pushing against them with his 
tray of summer drinks, ices, 
fruits, and sweetmeats. 

“ Let us go ; it is late ; and 


Goifn. 


n 


the crowd grows noisy,” said 
her duenna. 

Adrianis accompanied them 
to their gondola, which was in 
waiting beyond the pillars. 
He did not venture to offer to 
accompany them, for the hour 
was late, and the elder lady, 
herself a Zaranegra, was rigid 
in her construction and observ- 
ance of etiquette. He watched 
the gondola drift away amongst 
the many others waiting there, 
and then turned back to the 
piazza as the two Vulcans on 
the clock tower beat out on 
their anvil with their hammers 
the twelve strokes of midnight. 
He saw amongst the crowd 
the pale and thoughtful coun- 
tenance of Darner. Had he 


112 


aoiin* 


heard what the young Coun- 
tess had said of him ? It was 
impossible to tell from his ex- 
pression ; he was looking up at 
the four bronze horses, as he 
sat, with an evening paper on 
his knee, at one of the tables, 
an untouched lemonade stand- 
ing at his elbow. 

“ I did not know you were 
here,” said Adrianis. “ It is 
too frivolous a scene for you. 
Are you longing to dissect the 
horses of St. Mark’s ? ” 

Darner smiled slightly. 

“ I fear I should find their 
anatomy faulty. I am no art- 
ist, or art critic either, or I 
should venture to say that I 
object to their attitude. Ar- 
rested motion is a thing too 


Gorin* 


“3 


momentary to perpetuate in 
metal or in stone.” 

Adrianis looked up at the 
rearing coursers. 

“ Surely we might as well ob- 
ject to the statue of Colleone 
because he sits erect and mo- 
tionless through centuries?” 

“ No, that is quite another 
matter. Colleone is at rest. 
The horses yonder are leaping 
violently.” 

“You are too subtle for me ! 
I can only admire. I am an ig- 
norant, you know. Have you 
been here long ? ” 

“ Half an hour.” 

Had he heard? Adrianis 
wondered. It was impossible 
to tell. 

“ I seldom see you now,” he 


Goiin. 


114 

added. “You have become 
very unsociable.” 

“ I was not aware that I was 
ever sociable. People much oc- 
cupied cannot be so. You see I 
have a newspaper and I do not 
read it ; I have a bevanda and I 
do not drink it. I have seen the 
Contessa Zaranegra and I have 
not spoken to her.” 

It seemed that the reply, 
which was longer and more 
jesting than was the wont of 
the speaker, was made with in- 
tention. 

Adrianis was silent. He 
wished to tell Darner that his 
presence was unwelcome to the 
lady of whom he spoke, but he 
hesitated ; he was afraid to 
compromise her, to seem to 


Zoxin. 




boast of some confidence from 
her. 

“ Did you know/’ he asked in 
a low tone, “ that her poor serv- 
ing man would die under the 
knife?” 

Darner gave him a cold, con- 
temptous glance. 

“ I do not speak on profes- 
sional subjects to laymen,” he 
said, curtly. 

“ I do not ask you,” replied 
Adrianis, “ from the profes- 
sional point of view. I ask you 
from that of humanity.” 

“ Humanity does not enter 
into the question,” said Darner, 
slightingly. “ I hope you will 
not regard it as offensive if I ask 
you to limit yourself to speak- 
ing of what you understand.” 


ii6 


Zoiin. 


The blood rose into the cheek 
of Adrianis, and anger leapt to 
lips. He restrained it with 
effort from utterance. The 
boundless scorn which Damer 
never scrupled to show for him 
was at times very chafing and 
provocative. 

“You know, yourself, noth- 
ing of sculpture, you admit/’ he 
said, controlling his personal 
feeling, “and yet you venture 
to criticise the horses of Lysip- 
pus.” 

“ My criticism is sound, and 
they are not the horses of Ly- 
sippus.” 

“ They may not be. But my 
criticism is sound too, I think, 
on your want of humanity to- 
wards poor Biancon.” 


Goifn, 


17 


Damer cast an evil and dis- 
dainful glance at him. 

“ With regard,” he replied, 
44 to the man Biancon, there 
could be no question of either 
cruelty or kindness. These 
terms do not enter into surgi- 
cal vocabularies. You are well 
aware that on the stage no 
actor could act who felt in any 
manner the real emotions of his 
part. In like degree no sur- 
geon could operate who was un- 
nerved by what you call 4 hu- 
manity ’ with regard to his pa- 
tient. There is no more of 
feeling, or want of feeling, in 
the operator than in the actor. 
Is it impossible for you to com- 
prehend that ? As for your- 
self, you do not care the 


n8 Gorin, 

least for the dead facchino, 
you only care because a fair 
woman who is dear to you has 
wept.” 

He spoke with insolence, but 
with apparently entire indiffer- 
ence. Adrianis colored with 
displeasure and self-conscious- 
ness. It was the first time that 
the name of the Countess Zara- 
negra had been mentioned be- 
tween them when out of her 
presence. It seemed to him an 
intolerable presumption in Da- 
rner to speak of her. But he 
scarcely knew how to reply. 
With a man of his own rank he 
would have quarrelled in such 
a manner that a sabre duel on 
the pastures by the Brenta 
river would have followed in the 


{Toxin. 


19 


morning. But Damer was not 
socially his equal, and was a 
man to whom a year before he 
had owed, or had thought that 
he owed, his restoration to 
health and life. 

“ I should prefer that you 
left the name of that lady out 
of our discourse,” he said, in a 
low tone but with hauteur. 
“ In my world we do not ven- 
ture to speak of women whom 
we respect.” 

Damer understood the re- 
proof and the lesson so con- 
veyed. 

“ I am not of your world,” 
he said, slightingly. “ I have 
no such pretensions. And 
women are to me but subjects 
of investigation, like cats — in 


120 


Goifn. 


their bodies, I mean ; of their 
minds and hearts I have no 
knowledge. I leave such 
studies to Paul Bourget and 
you.” 

Then he rose and walked 
away towards the end of the 
piazza, where the opening of 
the goldsmiths’ street of the 
Me^ceria leads to the back of 
the clock-tower and the net- 
work of narrow passages be- 
yond it. 

Adrianis did not detain him, 
but went himself to his gon- 
dola and was taken the few 
yards which parted St. Mark’s 
from his hotel. Sometimes he 
slept on board his yacht, but 
sometimes at the hotel, be-* 
cause it was nearer to the Ca’ 


tloifn. 


1 2 1 


Zaranegra, which he could not 
see from his windows, but 
which he knew were there on 
the bend of the canal towards 
Rialto. 

However, he reflected with 
consolation, in a week or two 
more Veronica would go to 
her father’s villa in the moun- 
tains of the Trentino, and she 
had given him to understand 
that she would tell the duke to 
invite him. Thither it would 
be impossible for Darner to go, 
even if he should desire to do 
so, which was improbable. For 
Adrianis never suspected the 
existence of any passion in Da- 
rner except the desire of com- 
mand, the pleasure which the 
exercise of a strong will over 


122 


Goxin. 


weaker ones gave him from 
its sense of intellectual do- 
minion. 

The words of Darner seemed 
to him insolent ; but he was 
used to his insolence, and he 
did not attribute them to any 
other feeling than that cold- 
ness of heart which was not 
new to him in the speaker. 

To all interference in, or in- 
terrogation concerning, his 
scientific or surgical actions 
and purposes the Englishman 
had always replied with the 
same refusal to permit those 
whom he called laymen to 
judge either the deeds or the 
motives of his priesthood. It 
was precisely the same kind* of 
arrogance and of inflexible se- 


Gorin* 


23 


crecy to which Adrianis had 
been used in the ecclesiastics 
who had been set over him in 
his boyhood ; the same refusal 
to be interrogated, the same 
mystic and unexplained claim 
of superiority and infallibility. 

“ If he would only go away ! ” 
thought Adrianis, as his gon- 
dola glided over the few hun- 
dred yards. 

For the next few days he 
and Darner did not meet ; he 
had arranged an excursion to 
Chioggia, and another to Grado, 
in which small cruises the 
Countess Zaranegra and other 
ladies were on board his 
schooner. It was beautiful 
weather ; the sea was smooth 
and smiling; all that wealth 


124 


Zoxin. 


could do to make the little 
voyages delightful was done, 
and he hoped in the course of 
them to have some opportu- 
nity to force from the lady of 
his thoughts some definite as- 
surance of her acceptance of 
his love. In this hope he was 
disappointed. 

Darner was not on board 
the yacht ; but as she saw, 
over the distant water as they 
sailed away from Venice, the 
foundry flames and factory 
smoke of the Fondamenti, 
where his tower stood, she 
shuddered in the hot midsum- 
mer noon. It seemed as if 
even from that distance the 
eyes of the strange English- 
man could see her and lay si- 


Goifn. 


125 


lence on her lips and terror on 
her heart. It was but a mor- 
bid fancy ; she knew that ; 
but she could not shake off the 
impression. Even when far 
out on the sunlit green waves 
of the Adriatic, when Venice 
had long dropped away out of 
sight, the chilliness and op- 
pression of the hallucination 
remained with her. 

Although she and every one 
else knew that the water-fetes 
were solely in her honor and 
for her pleasure, she contin- 
ued to accept the homage but 
to stop short of any actual and 
decisive words on her own 
part. Adrianis believed that 
her heart was his, and he could 
see nothing in the circum- 


126 


tToiim 


stances of either of them 
which need cause so much hes- 
itation and doubt. Each was 
free, each young; each might 
run to meet happiness half- 
way, as children run to catch 
a ripe fruit before it has time 
to fall to earth, and pluck it, 
warm with sunlight, or pause, 
and let it drop ungathered. 
The position troubled and 
galled him, but his nature was 
sanguine and his temper opti- 
mistic. 

Adrianis returned to the 
city, not wholly discouraged, 
but vexed and impatient of 
continual probation and un- 
certainty. 

If he could not persuade her 
to promise herself to him in 


Goxhn 


127 


Venice he would follow her to 
the hills above Goritz, and 
there decide his fate. He had 
little doubt that he would suc- 
ceed before the summer should 
have wholly fled. 

“ It is getting too warm 
here ; let us go to the moun- 
tains,” said her companion. 

“ In a few days,” she an- 
swered. But the days passed, 
the weeks passed, the temper- 
ature grew higher, and she 
still did not move ; and Adri- 
anis stayed also, living chiefly 
on board his yacht, and Darner 
still delayed his departure, 
passing most of his time 
behind bolted doors in his 
two chambers on the Fonda- 
menti. 


128 


{Toxin. 


What harm could he do? 
What harm should he do ? 
He was going to the German 
university ; he would pass out 
of her existence with the 
steamship which should bear 
him from the Giudecca to 
Trieste ; he would vanish in 
the cold, grim, dark north, and 
she would remain in the sun- 
shine and laughter and mirth 
of the south. They had noth- 
ing in common : could have 
nothing. He belonged to his 
ghastly pursuits, his sickening 
experiments, his merciless am- 
bitions, and she belonged to 
herself — and another. So she 
told herself a hundred times, 
and out of his presence her 
reasoning served to reassure 


aoxiru 


129 


her. But whenever she saw 
him a vague, dull fear turned 
her heart cold. She felt as 
helpless as the blythe bird feels 
when suddenly in the flower- 
ing meadow, where it has 
made its nest, it sees a snake 
come gliding through the 
grass. The bird trembles, but 
does not fly away ; dares not 
fly away. So she dared not 
dismiss this man from her 
house, and had not courage 
to go herself out of the city, 
out of reach from his magnet- 
ism. Her nerves felt the same 
cold terror as was felt by those 
of the Venetian brides who 
were borne away from the 
feasting on Castello by the 
brown arms of the Moorish sea- 


ftoritu 


130 

ravishes. She endeavored to 
conceal what she felt, for she 
was ashamed of her own 
groundless and harmless fears, 
but they dulled for her the 
gaiety, the mirth, the beauty 
of the summer cruise on the 
emerald seas. 

“ You play with your happi- 
ness,” said her duenna, angrily, 
to her. 

“ I do not play, indeed,” she 
answered, seriously. “ We will 
go to the hills the day after to- 


morrow. 


XI. 


Adrianis went out on the 
following day to make some 
purchases of glass and metal 
work for which one of his 
sisters had written to him. He 
thought that when they were 
completed it would be but 
courtesy to go and tell Darner 
that he himself was about to 
leave the city, and offer him 
his yacht to go in, if he desired 
it, to Trieste. Their last words 
had been chafing and cold. 
The indulgent kindliness of his 
nature made him wish to part 
friends with a man to whom he 


Goiin. 


132 

considered that he owed his 
life. 

He bade his gondolier steer 
northwards to the Fondamenti. 
He had never been to the 
chambers occupied by Damer 
in the old watch-tower ; the 
other had always discouraged 
all visits ; but now he thought 
that he had better go there, or 
he might wholly miss seeing the 
Englishman again before his 
departure, for of late Damer 
had come but rarely to the Ca’ 
Zaranegra. But before he could 
give the order to his gondolier, 
in passing the Ponte del Para- 
diso, a sandalo, in which there 
was one person alone, fouled his 
own in the narrow channel, and 
that solitary person was Damer. 


Goitm 


13* 

“ I was just going to your 
apartments,’" cried Adrianis, 
whilst his gondolier swore 
loudly as his prow grazed the 
wall of Palazzo Narni. 

“ I am going to the hospital, 
and shall not be at home till 
dark,” replied Darner, ungra- 
ciously. 

“ I was coming to tell you,” 
said Adrianis, “ that I am about 
to leave Venice.” 

“ And are goingto Goritz, no 
doubt,” said Darner, with a 
brief smile. 

“ I may be and I may not,” 
replied Adrianis, in a tone 
which implied that wherever he 
chose to go was no business of 
any one’s. “ Anyhow, I wished 
to say that the schooner is 


*34 


{Toxin. 


entirely at your disposition if 
you remain here or if you cross 
to Trieste.” 

“Thanks. Yachts are rich 
men’s toys for which I have 
no use,” answered Darner, with- 
out saying where he was going 
or what he intended to do. 
“ Send yours to her docks in 
Messina, if you do not require 
her yourself.” 

“ You might be a little more 
polite,” said Adrianis, half an- 
grily, half jestingly. “ I should 
be glad to do you any services.” 

“ Poor men cannot accept 
such services.” 

“ Why do you constantly 
speak of your poverty? You 
have intellect ; that is much 
rarer than riches.” 


Goim. 


l 3S 

“ And much less esteemed/’ 
said Darner, with that brief, 
icy smile which always de- 
pressed and troubled Adrianis. 
“ I fear I cannot stay to gossip,” 
he added, “ I am already rather 
late for a conference at the hos- 
pital with my esteemed Vene- 
tian colleague.” 

They were about to part, 
Darner to pass underneath the 
bridge, Adrianis to pursue his 
way to a coppersmith’s work- 
shop when a weak, infantine cry 
smote on their ears, echoed by 
other shriller childish voices. 

There was a row of barges 
moored along the wall under 
the old grim Narni palace 
which stands just beyond the 
bridge, with its massive iron- 


136 


Goiim 


studded doors, unaltered in 
appearance since the time when 
Tiziano walked a living pres- 
ence over the Paradiso, and 
the sunshine shone on the 
golden hair of Palma Vecchio’s 
daughter. 

Some children were playing 
on the black barges which were 
laden with firewood and coal. 
They were small creatures, half 
naked in the warm air and 
sportive as young rabbits ; they 
ran, leaped, climbed the piles of 
fuel, caught each other in mimic 
wrestling and screamed with 
glad laughter ; there was only 
one who did not join in the 
games, a little boy who lay 
languidly and motionless on 
some sacks, and watched the 


TToiin. 


137 


sports of others with heavy 
eyes. 

There was no grown man or 
woman near, there were only 
the children, and the old palace, 
like a grey beard with closed 
eyes ; it looked as if it had been 
shut when Dandolo was young, 
and had never been opened 
since ; its white statues gazed 
down over the iron fencing of its 
garden wall ; they, too, were 
very old. 

As the gondola passed under 
that wall the sporting children 
growing wilder and more reck- 
less, rushed in their course past 
and over the little sick boy, and 
jostled him so roughly that they 
pushed him over the edge of 
the barge, and he fell, with a 


{Toxin. 


138 

shrill cry, into the water. The 
others, frightened at what had 
befallen them, gathered to- 
gether, whimpering and afraid, 
irresolute and incapable. The 
fallen child disappeared. The 
water hereabouts is thick and 
dark, and sewage flows un- 
checked into it. It was in that 
instant of his fall that his cry, 
and the shrieks of his com- 
panions, rose shrilly on the 
morning silence. 

In a second Adrianis sprang 
from the gondola, dived for the 
child, who had drifted under- 
neath the barge, and brought 
him up in his arms. He was a 
boy of some five years old, with 
a pretty pale face and naked 
limbs, his small, curly head fell 


Goifn. 




in exhaustion on the young 
man’s shoulder, his ragged 
clothes were dripping. 

Damer looked at him with 
professional insight. “ That 
boy is ill,” he said to Adrianis. 
“ You had better put him out 
of your arms.” 

“ Poor little man ! ” said 
Adrianis, gently, holding the 
child closer. “ What shall we 
do with him? We cannot 
leave him here with only these 
children.” 

“You are wet through your- 
self. You must go to your 
hotel,” said Damer. 

Adrianis was still standing in 
the water. At that moment a 
woman rose up from the cabin 
of the farthest barge, and came 


ho Zoxin. 

leaping wildly from one barge 
to another screaming, “ The 
child ! the child ! my Carlino ! ” 

She was his mother. Adri- 
anis gave him to her out- 
stretched arms, and slipped 
some money into the little rag- 
ged shirt. 

“ I will come and see how he 
is in an hour,” he said to her, 
amidst her prayers and bless- 
ings. “ He is not well. You 
must take more care of him ; 
you should not leave him alone.” 

The child opened his eyes 
and smiled. 

Adrianis stooped and kissed 
him. 

“Go home by yourself. I 
will stay and see what is the 
matter with him,” said Darner. 



“the child! the child! my carlino!” — Page 140 
















































Zoxin. 


141 

Adrianis went. Damer, bid- 
ding the woman go before him, 
walked over the barges until 
he reached the one to which 
there was attached a rude deck- 
house, or cabin, in which she 
and five children lived. There 
he examined the little boy. 

“A sore throat/’ he said, 
simply. “ I will bring you 
remedies.” 

He returned to his sandolo, 
and went on his way to the 
hospital conference. 

“ What is amiss with him ? ” 
said Adrianis, later in the 
day. 

“You would have done bet- 
ter to leave him in the canal 
water,” replied Damer. “ He 
is a weak little thing, he has 


142 


Goiltt. 


never had any decent food, he 
will never recover.” 

“ But what is his illness ? ” 

“ A sore throat,” replied Da- 
rner, as he had replied to the 
mother ; and added, “ It is what 
the Faculty call Boulogne sore 
throat.” 

They both went to the Ca’ 
Zaranegra that evening. There 
were several people there ; the 
night was very warm ; the tall 
lilies and palms on the balcony 
glistened in the light of a full 
moon ; there was music. Ve- 
ronica held out the lute to 
Adrianis. 

“ Will you not sing with me 
to-night ? ” 

“Alas! You must forgive 
me. I am rather hoarse. I 


Goiln. 


M3 


have no voice,” he answered, 
with regret. 

“ I heard of what you did 
this morning,” she murmured, 
in a low tone. “Your gondo- 
lier told mine. Perhaps you 
have taken a chill. I will go 
and see the little child to- 
morrow.” 

“ We will go together,” he 
replied, in the same soft whis- 
per, while his hand touched 
hers in seeming only to take 
the lute. Darner saw the ges- 
ture where he sat in the em- 
brasure of a window speaking 
of a frontier question of the 
hour with a German Minister 
who was passing through 
Venice. 

When they left the house 


144 


tToitm 


two or three other men accom- 
panied them on to the water- 
steps. Warm though the night 
was, Adrianis shivered a little 
as he wrapped his overcoat 
round him. “ I could bear 
my sables,” he said, as he 
descended the stairs. Darner 
looked at him in the moon- 
light, which was clear as the 
light of early morning. 

“ You should not plunge into 
sewage water, and embrace 
little sick beggars,” he said, 
coldly, as he accompained one 
of the Venetian gentlemen 
whose palace was near the Fon- 
damenti, and who had offered 
him a seat in his gondola. 

Adrianis, refusing the entrea- 
ties of his companions to go 


Goxin. 


145 

and sup with them at Florian’s, 
went to his rooms at the hotel. 
He had a flood of happiness at 
the well-springs of his heart, 
but in his body he felt feverish 
and cold. 

“ It is 'the sewage water. It 
got down my throat as I dived,’' 
he thought, recalling the words 
of his friend. “ I shall sleep 
this chill off and be well again 
in the morning.” 

But he did not sleep ; he 
drank some iced drinks thirst- 
ily, and only fell into a troubled 
and heavy slumber as the 
morning dawned red over the 
roofs of Venice, and the little 
cannon on the Giudecca saluted 
a new day. 

He felt ill when he rose, but 


146 


Goiin. 


he bathed and dressed, and, 
though he had no appetite for 
breakfast, went down to his 
gondola, which he had bidden 
to be before the hotel at nine 
o’clock. 

At parting from her he had 
arranged with Veronica that 
they should go at that hour to 
see the little child of the Bridge 
of Paradise. 

As he stood on the steps and 
was about to descend, Damer 
touched him on the arm. 

“You are going to take the 
Countess Zaranegra to the sick 
boy ? ” 

“Yes,” said Adrianis, with a 
haughty accent ; he did not like 
the tone of authority in which 
he was addressed. 


Goifn 


147 


“ I forbid you to do so, then,” 
said Damer. “ She would only 
see a dead body, and that body 
infectious with disease.” 

Adrianis was pained. 

“ Is the little thing dead ? ” 
he said, in a hushed voice. 
“ Dead already ? ” 

“ He died twenty minutes 
ago. He had been ill for three 
days.” 

“ Poor little pretty thing ! ” 
murmured Adrianis. “ I am 
sorry ; I will go to the mother.” 

“You had better go to your 
bed. You are unwell. You 
did a foolish act yesterday.” 

“ I am quite well. When I 
require your advice I will ask 
it,” said Adrianis, impatiently ; 
and he entered his gondola and 


148 


Goxin. 


went to the Ca’ Zaranegra. Da- 
rner, standing on the steps 
of the hotel, looked after him 
with a gaze which would have 
killed him could a look have 
slain. 

Her house was bright in the 
morning radiance, the green 
water lapping its marbles, the 
lilies and palms fresh from the 
night’s dew, the doors standing 
open showing the blossoming 
acacias in the garden behind. 

She came to him at once in 
one of the smaller salons. 

“ I am ready, ’’she said, gaily. 
“ Look ! I have got these fruits 
and toys for your little waif.” 

Then something in his ex- 
pression checked her gladness. 

“ What is it ? ” she asked. 


<Ioxln. 


M9 


“ The child is dead,” said 
Adrianis. 

“ Oh, how sad ! ” 

She put down the little gifts 
she had prepared on a table 
near her ; she was tender- 
hearted and quickly moved ; 
the tears came into her eyes for 
the little boy whom she had 
never seen. 

Adrianis drew nearer to her. 

“ Mia cara,” he murmured. 
“ Do not play with me any 
longer. Death is so near us al- 
ways. I have told you a hun- 
dred times that I love you. I 
will make you so happy if you 
will trust to me. Tell me — tell 


She was softened by emotion, 
conquered by the answering 


Gorin* 


150 

passion which was in her ; she 
did not speak, but her breast 
heaved, her lips trembled ; she 
let him take her hands. 

“You will be mine — mine — 
mine ! ” he cried, in delirious 
joy. 

“ I love you,” she answered, 
in a voice so low that it was 
like the summer breeze passing 
softly over the lilies. “Hush! 
Leave me ! Go now. Come 
back at three. I shall be 
alone.” 

The doors were open and the 
windows ; in a farther chamber 
two liveried servants stood ; ap- 
proaching through the ante- 
room was the figure of the 
major-domo of the palace. 

Adrianis pressed her hands to 


Goiin. 


si 


his lips and left her. He was 
dizzy from ecstasy, or so he 
thought, as the busts and 
statues of the entrance-hall 
reeled and swam before his 
sight, and his limbs felt so 
powerless and nerveless that, if 
one of his gondoliers had not 
caught and held him, he would 
have fallen headlong down the 
water-steps. 


XII. 


When three of the clock 
chimed from the belfries of St. 
Mark she awaited him, alone in 
her favorite room, clothed in 
white with a knot of tea-roses 
at her breast ; she was full of 
gladness ; she looked at herself 
in the many mirrors and saw 
that she was as fair as the fair 
June day. 

“ How beautiful our lives will 
be ! ” she thought. “ Poor 
little dead child ! It was his 
little hands joined ours. Per- 
haps he is an angel of God now, 
and will be always with us ! ” 


Goifn. 


S3 


She heard the swish of oars at 
the water-stairs below ; she 
heard steps ascending those 
stairs ; she heard the voice of 
her head servant speaking. It 
was he ! She put her hand to 
her heart ; it beat so wildly 
that the leaves of the roses fell ; 
she crossed herself and mur- 
mured a prayer ; such happiness 
seemed to merit gratitude. 

Through the vista of the 
ante-chambers came the figure 
of a man. But it was not that 
of Adrianis. 

Darner came up to her with 
his calm, expressionless face, 
his intent eyes, his air of 
authority and of indifference. 

“You expected the Prince 
Adrianis,” he said to her. “ I 


154 


Gorin. 


regret to tell you, madame, that 
he is unable to keep his appoint- 
ment with you. He has taken 
the disease of which that child 
on the barge died this morning. 
He has what the vulgar call 
diphtheria.” 


XIII. 

ADRIANIS lay in the large 
salon where, two months ear- 
lier, they had dined together in 
the evening after finding the 
opal necklace. Damer had 
caused a bed to be taken into 
it and placed in the centre of 
the room, as affording more air 
from the four large windows 
than was to be obtained from 
the inner bed-chamber adjoin- 
ing. He did not give the true 
name to the disease in speak- 
ing to the people of the hotel; 
he spoke merely of cold and 
fever from a plunge in the hot 


56 


Goiin. 


noonday into foul canal water ; 
on the local doctor, whom he 
paid the compliment of calling 
in, he enjoined the same re- 
serve. 

“ The Prince is very rich,” 
he said, “ he will pay for any 
loss which may be incurred, 
any renewal of furniture and of 
draperies.” 

From Adrianis he did not 
conceal the truth. 

Indeed, Adrianis himself said, 
in a hoarse, faint voice, “ I 
have the disease which the 
child had. Cure me if you 
can, for .” 

He did not add why life was 
more than ever beautiful to 
him, but the tears rose into his 
eyes ; the other understood 
what remained unspoken. 


Goitn. 


157 


When three in the afternoon 
sounded from the clock-tower 
on the south side of the hotel 
he raised his head, and, with a 
despairing gesture, said to Da- 
rner, “ She expects me. Go, 
and explain to her; say I am 
ill. Tell her I would get up 
and keep my tryst if I died at 
her feet, but I fear — I fear — 
the contagion — for her.” 

“ Lie where you are and you 
will probably be well in a few 
days,” said Darner. “ I will 
leave Stefanio with you and 
take your message. I shall 
soon return. Meanwhile your 
man knows what to do.” 

Stefanio was the valet. 

The eyes of Adrianis fol- 
lowed him from the room with 


158 


Goifn. 


longing and anguish. He was 
not yet so ill that the apathy 
of extreme illness dulled his 
desires and stilled his regrets. 
Both were intense as life still 
was intense in him. He would 
have risen and dragged himself 
to the Ca’ Zaranegra; but, as 
he had said, he feared the in- 
fection for her which would be 
in his voice, in his touch, in his 
breath, in his mere presence. 

He lay on his back gazing 
wistfully at the great sunny 
windows, only veiled by the 
gauze of mosquito curtains. 
He could hear the churning of 
the water below as the canal 
steamers passed up and down ; 
the softer ripple as oars parted 
it ; he could see a corner of the 


Gorin. 


59 


marbles of the Salute, with two 
pigeons sitting side by side on 
it pruning their plumage in the 
sun. 

He was not yet afraid, but he 
was very sorry ; he longed to 
be up and out in the bright air, 
and he longed to be in the 
presence of his beloved, to ask 
again and again and again for 
the confession so dear to him; 
to hear it from her lips, to read 
it in her eyes. 

“ She loves me, she loves 
me,” he thought, and he, like a 
coward, like a knave, must be 
untrue to the first meeting she 
had promised him ! 

“ Why is it,” he thought, as 
the tears welled up under his 
closed eyelids, “ that our bet- 


160 {Toxin* 

ter, kinder impulses always cost 
us so much more heavily than 
all our egotisms and all our 
vices?” 

If he had left the little child 
underneath the barge to drown, 
would it not have been better 
even for the child ? The little 
thing had only suffered some 
eighteen hours longer through 
his rescue. 

“ Let us do what we ought,” 
he murmured, in words his 
mother had often spoken to 
him. “ The gods will pay us.” 

But the gods had been harsh 
in their payment to him. 

He counted the minutes un- 
til Darner’s return, holding his 
watch in his hot hand. He 
took docilely what his servant 


TZoxin. 161 

gave him, though to swallow 
was painful and difficult. 

“ What a while he stays !” 
he thought, restlessly. He en- 
vied the other every moment 
passed at the Ca’ Zaranegra. 

“ What did you tell her? ” he 
asked, breathlessly, when Da- 
rner at last returned. 

“ I told her the truth,” re- 
plied Darner, as he placed the 
thermometer under the sick 
man’s armpit. “ You have wor- 
ried and fretted ; your fever has 
increased.” 

“What did she say? She is 
not angry, or offended ? ” 

“ Who can be so at the mis- 
fortune of disease? Of course 
she knows that you have in- 
curred this misfortune through 
your own folly.” 


162 


Zoxin . 


“ Did she say so ? ” 

“ No ; I am not aware that 
she said so. But she no doubt 
thought it. She bade me tell 
you not to agitate yourself.” 

“ Was that all ? ” 

“She added — for her sake,” 
said Darner, with a cold, slight 
smile. He was truthful in what 
he repeated ; he scorned vulgar 
methods of misrepresentation 
and betrayal. The heavy eyes 
of Adrianis gleamed and light- 
ened with joy. 

“ Thanks,” he said softly, 
and his hot hand pressed that 
of his friend. 

“ I will write to her,” he 
added. “You can disinfect a 
note?” 

“Yes. But do not exert 
yourself. Try to sleep.” 


Goifn. 163 

He crossed the room and 
closed the green wooden 
blinds ; he gave an order to 
Stefanio, and dipped his hands 
in a disinfecting fluid ; then he 
sat down and took up a book. 
But he could not read. He 
saw before him that blanched 
and frightened face, which a 
little while before had been 
raised to his as the voice of 
Veronica had cried to him, 
“ Save him ! You will save him? 
You have so much knowledge, 
so much power. You will save 
him for my sake ! ” 

He had promised her noth- 
ing ; he had only said briefly, 
in the language of people 
who were fools, that the issue 
of life and of death was in 


164 


Goifn. 


the hands of Deity. He had 
promised her nothing; in his 
own way he was sincere. Up 
to that time he had done 
everything which science and 
experience could suggest to 
combat the disease. 

Adrianis wrote at intervals 
various penciled notes to her ; 
indistinct, feebly scrawled, but 
still coherent. He pointed to 
each when it was written and 
looked at his friend with sup- 
plicating eyes. He could not 
speak, for the false membrane 
filled his throat. Darner took 
each little note with apparent 
indifference. 

“To the Countess Zarane- 
gra? ” he asked. 

Adrianis signed a mute as- 


Gorin. 


165 

sent. Damer carried each scrap 
of paper to the next room, 
disinfected it, and then sent it 
to its destination. He was of 
too proud a temper to use the 
usual small arts of the traitor. 

Once she wrote in reply. 

This he did thrice. 

“ I cannot see, my eyes are 
too weak,” Adrianis scrawled 
on its envelope as the letter 
was given to him. “ Read it 
to me.” 

Damer opened it, and read it 
aloud. It was short, timid, 
simple, but a deep love and an 
intense anxiety spoke in it. 
Adrianis took it and laid his 
cheek on it with a smile of in- 
effable peace. It seemed to 
give him firmer hold on life. 


i66 


Gorin. 


Adrianis slept peacefully, his 
cheek on the little letter, as a 
child falls to sleep with a fa- 
vorite toy on its pillow. 

He called in a second medi- 
cal man of the town and two 
sisters of charity to replace 
Stefanio, who grew alarmed for 
his own safety and would no 
longer approach the bed. 

“ Send for my mother/’ said 
Adrianis, in his choked voice. 

“ Certainly,” answered his 
friend. The disease which had 
fastened on Adrianis was not 
one which waits. But Darner 
telegraphed only to the Adri- 
anis’ palace in Palermo, and he 
knew that it was unlikely she 
would be in that city in the 
summer heats of the end of 
June. 


$oiin< 


167 


The telegram might be for- 
warded or it might not ; Italian 
households are careless in such 
matters. 

But when he murmured once 
and again, “ Send for my 
mother!" Darner could, with 
a clear conscience, reply, “ I 
have telegraphed." 

He sat by the bedside and 
watched the sick man. 

He believed that he would 
recover. 

In the dusk he was told that 
a lady who was below in her 
gondola desired to see him. 
He descended the stairs, pre- 
pared to find Veronica Za- 
ranegra. She was veiled; he 
could not see her features, but 
he knew her by the turn of 


1 68 


£oiin. 


her head, the shape of her 
hand, before she spoke. 

“You come for news of the 
Prince?” he said, coldly and 
harshly. “ I can give you 
none. The disease is always 
uncertain and deceptive.” 

“ Let me see him ! oh, let me 
see him ! ” she murmured. “ I 
came for that. No matter 
what they say. No matter 
what danger there be. Only 
let me see him ! ” 

“That is wholly impossible,” 
replied Darner, in an unchanged 
tone. “ Why do you come on 
such errands ? ” 

“ Who should see him if not 
I ? Who are you that you 
should keep me from him ? ” 

“ I am a man of science 


Goiln. 


169 


whose duty it is to protect you 
from yourself. Go home, ma- 
dame, and pray for your be- 
trothed. That is all that you 
can do.” 

She burst into tears. He 
heard her sobs, he saw the 
heaving of her shoulders and 
her breast. 

“Take your mistress home. 
She is unwell,’' he said to the 
gondolier, who waited a mo- 
ment for his lady’s orders, then, 
receiving none, pushed his oar 
against the steps and slowly 
turned the gondola round to 
go back up the canal. 

“ Why does she love him ? ” 
thought Darner. “ Like to 
like. Fool to fool. Flower to 
flower! ” 


170 Goxfm 

From his soul he despised 
her, poor lovely, mindless, 
childlike creature ! But her 
voice turned his blood to 
flame ; the sound of her weep- 
ing deepened his scorn to hate ; 
the touch of her ungloved hand 
was ecstasy and agony in one ; 
he loved her with furious, 
brutal, unsparing passion, like 
lava under the ice of his self- 
restraint. 

He stood in the twilight and 
looked after the black shape of 
the gondola. 

“He shall never be yours,’' 
he said in his heart. “Never — 
never — never ! unless I die in- 
stead of him to-night.” 

He remained there some 
minutes whilst the water traffic 


Gorin. 


171 

passed by him unnoticed and 
the crowds flocked out from a 
novena in the Salute. 

The day became evening, the 
lovely roseate twilight of sum- 
mer in Venice wore into night, 
and the night waned into dawn. 
All the animation of Venetian 
life began again to awake with 
the whirr of the wings of the 
pigeons taking their sunrise 
flight from dome and cupola 
and pinnacle and gutter. To 
the sisters of charity their 
patient seemed better; to the 
surgeons of the city also ; 
Darner said nothing. 

“ Is he not better ? ” asked 
the nun, anxiously. 

“ I see little amelioration,” 
replied Darner, and said in a 


172 


tloxin* 


louder tone to Adrianis, “ Your 
mother has telegraphed ; she 
will soon be here.” 

Adrianis smiled again a smile 
which lighted up his beautiful 
brown eyes and momentarily 
banished their languor. He felt 
disposed to sleep, but he drew 
his pencil and paper to him and 
wrote feebly, “ Mme. Zara- 
negra ? ” 

Darner read the name. 

“She came to see you an 
hour or two ago,” he answered. 
“ But I could not allow it. 
Your illness is infectious.” 

He spoke in his usual brief, 
calm, indifferent manner. Adri- 
anis sighed, but it was a sigh of 
content ; he was half asleep, he 
turned on his pillows and drew 


XLoxin, 


173 


her little note which he had 
hidden under them once more 
against his cheek. 

“ He will sleep himself well,” 
said the nun. 

“ Let us hope so,” replied 
Darner ; but she heard from his 
tone that he did not share her 
belief. 

It was now eleven o’clock. 

“ Go and rest,” he said to her. 
“ You need it. I will watch to- 
night. If there be any neces- 
sity for aid I will summon 
you.” 

“Will his mother soon be 
here ? ” asked the sister, whose 
heart was tender. 

“ I believe so,” replied 
Darner. 

One of the medical men 


174 


ftoifn. 


whom he had summoned came 
out on to the balcony to his 
side. 

“The sisters say the prince 
is better; he seems so,” said 
his colleague. 

“ What do they know ? ” said 
Darner ; and added less harshly, 
“ It is too early to be able to 
make sure of recovery ; it is a 
disease which is very treacher- 
ous.” 

“ He has youth on his side.” 

“Yes; but he is weakened 
by the effects of a wound he 
received last year for which I 
treated him. His constitution 
is not prepared to make so soon 
again another struggle for ex- 
istence.” 


“You have more knowledge 


XToiin. 


175 


of him than I,” said the Vene- 
tian, who was a meek man, not 
very wise. 

“ Come to my laboratory in 
the Fondamente, and I will 
show you something and tell 
you something,” said Darner. 

His Italian colleague, flat- 
tered, complied with the re- 
quest. 

What he showed him were 
three animals, two rabbits and 
a cat, inoculated with and dying 
of diphtheria ; what he ex- 
plained to him were the theo- 
ries of Lceffler and Klebs and 
the discovery of the presumed 
antidote by Behring ; he also 
displayed to him some serum 
which he had received from 
Roux, who was only then at 


176 


tToiln. 


the commencement of his ap- 
plications of Behring’s theory. 

The Venetian doctor in- 
spected and listened with deep 
respect. 

“ Why do you not try this 
treatment on the prince?” he 
said, which was what Darner 
desired and intended him to 
say. 

“ I will do so on my own re- 
sponsibility if he be no better 
in the morning,” he replied. 
“ But you will admit that the 
responsibility will be great, the 
theory of the cure being at 
present unknown to the gen- 
eral public, and no one of his 
family being at present in Ven- 
ice to authorize the experiment. 

“We are there as your col- 


Goiim 


177 


leagues, and we shall support 
you/’ replied the more obscure 
man, touched and flattered by 
the deference of one who was 
in the confidence of French 
and German men of science. 

“ If there be no other way, 
I will take the risk ; the risk is 
less than that of tracheotomy,” 
said Darner, as he put the 
small phial of serum back into 
a locked case. 


XIV. 


When the Venetian doctor 
left him he took the phial of 
serum, the inoculating syringe, 
and another smaller bottle con- 
taining a clear liquid, which 
was the toxin or virus of the 
malady, and which he had not 
shown to the Venetian. He 
put these together in the breast 
pocket of his coat. He had no 
belief in the efficacy of the 
serum, but he had prepared the 
venom of the toxin himself ; 
and in that small glass tube 
there was poison enough to 
slay twelve men. 


ttoiin. 


179 


“ If there be no other way,” 
he repeated to himself as he 
went back to the hotel through 
the moonlit canals and under 
the ancient houses. 

The dual meaning which lay 
in the words was like a devil’s 
laugh in his ears. 

He looked up at the Ca’ 
Zaranegra as he passed it ; its 
windows were all dark, and the 
white lilies on the balconies 
had no light upon them save 
that from the rays of the moon. 

As he entered the lighted 
hall of the hotel they handed 
to him a telegram. It was 
from the Princess Adrianis. 
She had received his despatch 
twelve hours late as she had 
been in her summer palace in 


180 Xloxin . 

the mountains ; she had left 
Sicily immediately, and said 
that she would travel without 
pause at the utmost speed possi- 
ble. She added : “ I commend 
my darling to God and to you.” 

Darner crushed the paper up 
in his hand with a nervous 
gesture and flung it out, by the 
open doorway, into the water 
below. 

Then he ascended the stair- 
case, and entered his patient’s 
room. 

The night was very warm ; 
the windows stood wide open ; 
there was a shaded porcelain 
lamp alight on the table. One 
nun watched whilst the other 
slept. Adrianis lay still on 
the great bed in the shadow ; 



“HE lit a candle and approached the bed.” — 

Page 181 . 










































zroim. 


i8r 

he was awake, his eyes were 
looking upward, his mouth 
was open but his breathing 
was easier and less hard. 

The sister of charity whis- 
pered to Damer, “ I think he 
is better. The fungus growth 
seems loosening. We have 
given the wine and the meat 
essence. He could swallow.’' 

He lit a candle and ap- 
proached the bed. Adrianis 
smiled faintly. He could not 
speak. 

“ Let me see your throat,’" 
said Damer. 

He saw that the nun had 
spoken truly ; the fungus 
growth was wasting, the false 
membrane was shrinking ; there 
was a healthier look on the 


182 


Goiin. 


tongue. He set the lamp 
down and said nothing. 

“ Is he not better ? ” said the 
sister, anxiously. 

“ Perhaps,” he replied. “ If 
there be no re-formation of the 
false membrane he may be 
saved. Go, my good woman, 
and rest while you can.” 

She went, nothing loth, to 
her supper and her bed. Da- 
rner was alone with the man 
who trusted him and whose 
mother trusted him. 

He went away from the bed- 
side and sat down by one of 
the windows. His heart had 
long years before been ren- 
dered dumb and dead ; his 
mind alone remained alive and 
his passions. 


{Toxin. 


183 

He stayed in the open air, 
looking down on the green 
water. 

“ Man cannot control cir- 
cumstances,” he thought, “ but 
the wise man can assist circum- 
stance, the fool does not.” 

He had in him that fell ego- 
tism of science which chokes 
the fountain of mercy at its 
well-springs in blood. He sat 
by the window and looked out 
absently at the night. 

He knew that the nun was 
right ; he knew that the disease 
was passing away from the sick 
man ; that, if left alone, sleep 
and youth would restore him 
to health, to love, and joy. 

Should he leave him alone ? 

Should he let him live to be- 


1 84 Goxin. 

come the lover and lord of 
Veronica Zaranegra? Should 
he let those two mindless, 
flowerlike lives lean together, 
and embrace, and multiply ? 

It would be what men called 
a crime, but his school despises 
the trivial laws of men, know- 
ing that for the wise there is 
no such thing as crime and no 
such thing as virtue — only le- 
sions of the brain, and absence 
of temptation and opportunity. 

The mother of Adrianis 
could not be there before an- 
other day, travel as rapidly as 
she would. He knew the ef- 
fect of affection on the nervous 
system, and that the sight and 
sense of a beloved person near 
them often gave to enfeebled 




i»5 

frames the power of resistance 
and recovery. Those emotions 
were not in himself, but he 
recognized their existence, and 
he knew that in Adrianis the 
emotions and the affections 
were very strong in proportion 
as the mental powers were 
slight. 

He must not await the arri- 
val of the princess. He had 
before been witness of her de- 
votion, of her skill in illness, of 
her fortitude, and of the love 
existing between her and her 
son. They were powers he 
despised and never pitied, as 
he never pitied the love of the 
nursing bitch from whom he 
removed her litter that he 
might watch her die of the 


1 86 


Gorin. 


agony of her bursting teats. 
But he was conscious of the ex- 
istence of such powers ; and the 
physiologist ignores no facts 
which he has demonstrated, 
though they may belong to an 
order with which he has no 
sympathy. 

He knew that he must not 
allow the mother of Adrianis to 
arrive in time to see her son 
alive. 

“ What thou doest, do 
quickly,” he murmured in words 
which he had heard in his 
childhood as he had sat in the 
old parish church of his native 
village. 

He rose and walked to the 
bed. 

Adrianis still seemed to sleep, 


Gorin. 


187 


the breathing was heavy and 
forced chiefly through the nasal 
passages ; but there was a look 
of returning serenity on his 
features: a look which the man 
of science is well aware precedes 
recovery, not death. 

As surely as any one can 
guage the unseen future, he was 
sure that if let alone the young 
man would recover, would in a 
week or two arise unharmed 
from his bed. He was equally 
sure that he had himself, in his 
breast, the means of changing 
that process of recovery into 
the agony of dissolution. He 
no longer hesitated ; he no 
longer doubted. He went to 
the adjacent chamber, where 
the two nuns, still dressed. 


1 88 


Goifn. 


were sleeping. He awakened 
them. 

“Come,” he said, gently. 
“ He is worse. I am about to 
try the cure of Behring. It 
may succeed. There is no other 
chance. It will be necessary 
to hold him. I require you 
both.” 

He was well aware that it 
would be unwise to essay that 
operation alone — it would rouse 
comment in the day to come. 

“ Hold him motionless,” he 
said to the two women. “ Do 
not awake him if you can avoid 
it.” 

He filled the inoculating 
syringe from one of the little 
phials which he had brought 
from the Fondamente. He 


XToiiit. 


189 


stood in the full light of the 
lamp so that the two sisters 
could see all that he did. 

“Loosen his shirt,” he said 
to them. Adrianis still slept ; 
in his predisposition to sleep the 
few drops of chloral which had 
been administered twenty min- 
utes earlier, had sufficed to 
render him almost insensible. 

Darner bent over him and in- 
serted the injecting needle into 
one of the veins ; the incision 
disturbed him without wholly 
loosening the bonds of the 
soporific ; he struggled slightly, 
moaned a little, but the nuns 
succeeded in resisting his en- 
deavor to rise ; the inocula- 
tion was successfully made. 

The face of Darner in the 


190 


Goiirn 


lamplight was not paler than 
usual, but his hand trembled as 
he withdrew the syringe. 

“What is Behring’s cure?” 
asked the nun who felt most 
interest in her patient. 

“An antitoxin ; the serum of 
an immune beast,” he answered, 
calmly, as he turned slightly 
towards her. The nun did not 
understand, but she was afraid 
of troubling him with other 
questions. 

He walked to the window and 
stood looking out at the moon- 
lit water. 

He had left on a table the 
syringe and the phial of serum 
which was half empty. But in 
the breast pocket of his coat he 
had the phial of toxin, and that 


tloiln. 


191 

phial was wholly empty. The 
nuns, engrossed in holding 
down Adrianis, had not seen 
that the glass tube on the table 
was not the one from which the 
syringe had been filled ; and, 
when used, Darner had plunged 
the syringe immediately into 
a bowl of disinfecting acid. 
There was no trace anywhere 
that the toxin had been used 
instead of the serum ; no trace 
whatever save in the tumifying 
vein of the sick man’s throat. 

“You had better stay near 
him, you may be wanted, and 
it is two o’clock,” said Darner 
to the nurses. “ I shall remain 
here. There will be, I hope, a 
great change soon.” 

He went out on to the bal- 


192 


Goiftn 


cony and turned his back on 
the watching women and 
leaned against the iron-work, 
looking down on the canal, 
where nothing moved except 
the slow, scarcely visible ripple 
of the water. He was human 
though he had killed his hu- 
manity, replacing it by intel- 
lect alone. He suffered in 
that moment; a vague sense 
of what ignorance calls crime 
was on him painfully ; he had 
emancipated himself wholly 
from the superstitions and 
prejudices of men; but he 
was conscious that he had 
now done that which, if known, 
would put him outside the 
pale of their laws. 

He did not repent or regret ; 


Goiln. 


J 93 


he did not see any evil in his 
act. The right of the strong, 
the right of the sage was his ; 
he had but exercised his reason 
to produce an issue he desired. 

So he thought as he leaned 
against the iron scroll work 
and watched the thick, dark 
water glide by past the marble 
steps of the Salute. There 
was a faint light on the sky in 
the east, but he could not see 
the east where he stood ; it 
was still completely night be- 
tween the walls of the Grand 
Canal. The voice of a man 
called up to him from the 
darkness below. 

“Madam sends me to know 
how goes it with the prince?” 

Darner looked down. “Tell 


194 


Goiin* 


the Countess Zaranegra that 
things are as they were. A 
new remedy has been essayed.’' 

The man who had come by 
the calle retired by them, 
swinging a lantern in his hand. 

The two Vulcans of the 
clock-tower, hard by in St. 
Mark’s square, struck four 
times upon their anvil. Da- 
rner looked up the darkness of 
the canal where nothing was to 
be seen but the lamps which 
burned on either side of it 
with their reflections, and the 
lanterns tied to poles before 
some of the palaces. He 
could not see the Ca’ Zarane- 
gra, which was not in sight 
even in the day, but he saw it 
in remembrance with its flower- 


Gorin. 


195 


ing balconies, its tapestried 
chambers, its red and white 
awnings, its great escutcheon 
over its portals. He saw her 
in his vision as she must be 
now — awake, listening for her 
messenger’s return, in some 
white, loose gown no doubt, 
with her hair loose, too, upon 
her shoulders, her face white, 
her eyes strained in anxiety, 
as he had seen them that after- 
noon and evening. 

If Adrianis had lived she 
would have been his wife : that 
was as certain as that the sea 
was beating on the bar of Mal- 
omocco underneath the moon. 

“ I have done well ; I have 
exercised my supremacy,” he 
thought. “ We have right of 


196 Goitn. 

life and death over all birds, 
and beasts, and things which 
swim and crawl, by virtue of 
our greater brain ; in like man- 
ner has the greater brain the 
right to deal as it will with the 
weaker brain when their paths 
meet and one must yield and 
go under. The fool hath said 
that there is sanctity in life, 
but the man of science has 
never said it. To him one or- 
ganism or another has the 
same measure in his scales.” 

Strangely enough, at that 
moment and incongruously 
there came to him a remem- 
brance of his own childish 
days ; of sitting by his mother’s 
side in the little, dark, damp 
church of their northern ham- 


ftoxin* 


197 


let, and reading written on their 
tablets the Twelve Command- 
ments. 

“ Mother, what is it to do 
murder ? ” he had asked her ; 
and she had answered, “ It is 
to take life ; to destroy what 
we cannot recall.” 

He remembered how, some 
weeks later, when he had killed 
from wantonness a mole which 
ran across a road, he had been 
frightened and had gone to 
his mother, and said to her, 
“ Mother, mother, I have done 
murder. I have taken life and 
I cannot recall it.” And his 
mother had smiled and an- 
swered, “ That is not murder, 
my dear. A little mole is a 
dumb creature.” 


198 


Gorin. 


But his mother had been 
wrong, as the world was wrong. 
Whether the organism were 
animal or human, what differ- 
ence was there ? Only a differ- 
ence of brain. 

The world and its lawgivers 
might and would still say that 
what destroyed the human or- 
ganism was murder, that is, a 
crime ; but to the trained, logi- 
cal, strong reason of Darner 
the sophism was a premiss un- 
tenable. To slay a man was 
no more than to slay a mole. 
To do either was to arrest a 
mechanism, to dissolve tissues, 
to send elements back into the 
space they came from ; it was 
nothing more. One organism 
or another, what matter ? 


XToiin* 


199 


Since that day in the dim 
long ago, he had taken life, not 
once, not twice, but thousands 
of times, causing the greatest 
and most lingering agony in its 
inflictions. But in his opinion 
that had not been murder ; it 
had been only torture and 
slaughter of dumb creatures 
according to human law. 
What difference could there be 
if, by accident, the creature to 
be removed were human ? 

He was consistent enough, 
and sincere enough to follow 
out the theories of the labora- 
tory to their logical sequence 
without flinching. He hon- 
estly held himself without 
blame. 

He was only a man, and 


200 


Goxin. 


therefore he felt some sickly 
sense of pain when he heard in 
the still and waning night the 
sound of his victim’s convul- 
sive struggles to gain breath ; 
but he held himself without 
blame, for every thesis and 
every deduction of the priest- 
hood of science justified and 
made permissible his action 
to bring about a catastrophe 
which was necessary to him. 

Science bade him take all 
the other sentient races of 
earth and make them suffer as 
he chose and kill them as he 
chose. Those other races were 
organisms as susceptible as 
the human organisms. Why 
should the human organism 
enjoy immunity? 


Zoxin. 


201 


He had done no more than 
is done for sake of experiment 
or observation in the hospital 
or the laboratory every day all 
over the known world. The 
reluctance to face what he had 
done was merely that residue 
of early influences and im- 
pressions which remains in the 
soul of the strongest, haunting 
its remembrances and emascu- 
lating its resolution. 

He called up to his com- 
mand that volition, that ppwer 
of will which had never failed 
him ; he returned to the bed- 
side as he would have returned 
to visit a dog dying under the 
pressure of eight atmospheres. 

Adrianis still lay in the same 
position. About the almost 


202 


SToitn. 


invisible orifice where the 
needle had punctured there 
was a slight tumified swelling. 

“ He seems worse,” whis- 
pered the nun. 

“ He cannot be either better 
or worse as yet,” replied Da- 
rner, truthfully. “ Give him a 
little wine, if he can take it.” 

They might give him what 
they chose ; they could not 
now save him from death. He 
had received enough of the 
virus into his veins to slay a 
man in health. Passing as it 
did into an organ already dis- 
eased, he would die before the 
sun rose, or an hour after. 

He had aided nature to de- 
stroy her own work. There 
was nothing new or criminal 


Goiht. 


203 

in that — nature was for ever 
creating and destroying. Once 
it had suited him to save that 
young man’s life ; now it suited 
him to end it. 

One action was as wrong or 
as righteous as the other. It 
was an exercise of power, as 
when the monarch grants an 
amnesty or signs a death war- 
rant. Who blames the mon- 
arch who does but use his 
power ? The prerogative of 
superior reason is higher than 
the prerogative of a monarch. 
Moreover, who would ever 
know it ? Who would ever be 
aware that the intenser virus of 
the toxin had mingled with the 
natural formation of the dis- 
ease ? 


204 


Zoxin. 


Even were there an autopsy, 
discovery would be impossible ; 
the concentrated venom had 
mingled with and been ab- 
sorbed in the common and 
usual growth of the false mem- 
brane. He had but aided 
death instead of hindering it. 

His professional conscience 
would have shrunk from giving 
the disease, but it did not 
shrink from making death cer- 
tain where it was merely possi- 
ble. He did but add a stronger 
poison to that which nature 
had already poisoned. 

Men slew their rivals in duels 
and no one blamed them ; who 
should blame him because he 
used the finer weapon of 
science instead of the coarser 


{Toxin. 


205 


weapon of steel ? He did but 
carry out the doctrine of the 
laboratory to its just and logi- 
cal sequence. 

What he felt for Veronica 
was not love, but passion, and 
not passion alone, but the 
sense of dominion. He knew 
that the fair creature shrank 
from him, but submitted to 
him. All the intense instinc- 
tive tyranny of his nature 
longed to exercise itself on her, 
the beautiful and patrician 
thing, so far above him, so 
fragile and so fair. He knew 
that he would never possess her 
or command her except through 
fear; but this would suffice to 
him. The finer and more deli- 
cate elements of love were in- 


206 


{Toxin. 


different to him, were indeed 
unknown. They had existed 
in Adrianis, whom he had de- 
spised ; but in his own temper- 
ment they could find no dwell- 
ing place. His desires were 
brutal, as had ever been those 
of Attila, whose throne lies low 
amongst the grasses on Tor- 
cello. 

Late at night and early at 
dawn messengers came from 
some noble families in the city, 
and the Ca’ Zaranegra. Da- 
rner replied to all inquiries, “ It 
is impossible to say what turn 
the disease may take.” 

Darner said nothing. He 
looked out at the marble 
church which had no message 
for him, and down the moon* 


i 


Gorin. 


207 


lit waters which had no beauty 
for him. He was absorbed in 
meditation. His will desired 
to do that from which his nat- 
ural weakness shrank; for in 
his great strength he was still 
weak being human. The in- 
fliction of death was nothing 
to him ; could be nothing ; he 
was used to kill as he was used 
to torture with profound in- 
difference, with no more hes- 
itation, than he ate or drank or 
fulfilled any natural function of 
his body. To obtain knowl- 
edge, even the approach of 
knowledge, he would have in- 
flicted the most agonizing and 
the most endless suffering with- 
out a moment’s doubt or a 
moment’s regret. From his 


208 




boyhood upwards he had al- 
ways lived in the hells created 
by modern science, wherein if 
the bodies of animals suffer 
the souls of men wither and 
perish. What was the man 
lying sleeping there to him ? 
Only an organism like those 
which daily he broke up and 
destroyed and threw aside. 
Only an organism, filled by 
millions of other invisible or- 
ganisms by a myriad of para- 
site animalculae, numerous as 
the star-dust in the skies. 

The woman whom he de- 
sired was nothing more ; he 
could not deem her more; he 
scorned himself for the empire 
over him of his own desire of 
her perishable form, of her 


Goifn< 


209 


foolish butterfly life. He him- 
self was no more, but there 
was alight in him that light of 
the intellect which in his own 
esteem raised him above them 
into an empyrean unknown by 
them. His intellect made him 
as Caesar, as Pharaoh ; their 
foolishness made them as 
slaves. 

The time is nigh at hand 
when there will be no priests 
and no kings but those of 
science, and beneath their feet 
the nations will grovel in ter- 
ror and writhe in death. 

He went out again into the 
balcony, leaving the nuns to 
endeavor to administer the 
wine, which, however, their 
patient could not swallow, the 


210 


Gorin. 


fungus growth closed his 
larynx. His head was thrown 
back on the pillows ; his eyes 
were staring but sightless ; his 
face was pallid and looked blue 
round the mouth and about 
the temples. He was now 
straining for breath ; like a 
horse fallen on the road, blown 
and broken. 

They called loudly to Da- 
rner, being frightened and hor- 
rified. He re-entered the 
chamber. 

“ He is worse,” he said, 
gravely. 

The nun, who had a tender 
heart, wept. Darner sat down 
by the bed. He had seen that 
struggle for air a thousand 
times in all the hospitals of 


aortn. 


2 1 1 


Europe. It could now have 
but one end. 

A little while after they 
brought him a note and a tel- 
egram. The first was from the 
Countess Zaranegra. It said : 
“You must let me see him. It 
is my right, my place.” 

The second was from the 
mother of Adrianis ; it said : “ I 
have reached Bologna ; I shall 
soon be with you. God bless 
you for your goodness to my 
son.” 

He read them, and tore the 
one in pieces and flung the 
pieces in the canal; the other 
he put in his breast pocket be- 
side the empty phial of toxin. 

The mother’s letter would be 
useful if any called in question 


212 


Zoxin. 


the too late usage of the Beh 
ring serum. It would show the 
complete confidence placed in 
him by the writer. At that 
moment his two Venetian 
colleagues arrived. The day 
had dawned. The women put 
out the light of the lamps. 

‘‘You have given the anti- 
toxin?” said the elder of the 
Venetians, glancing at the syr- 
inge. 

“ I have,” replied Darner. 
“ But, I believe, too late.” 

“ I fear too late,” replied the 
Venetian. “ Not less admirable 
is your courage in accepting 
such responsibility.” 

Darner bowed. He looked 
grave and worn, which was 
natural in a man who had been 


tToilm 


213 


in anxious vigil through thirty- 
six hours by the bedside of his 
friend. 

“Have you any hope?” 
whispered the Venetian. 

“I confess none, now,” he 
answered. 

The pure light of earliest 
daybreak was in the whole of 
the vast chamber. 

It shone on that ghastly 
sight, a man dying in his youth, 
struggling and straining for a 
breath of air, fighting against 
suffocation. 

The fresh sea air was flowing 
through the room, sweet with 
the odors of fruits and flowers, 
free to the poorest wretch that 
lived. But in all that boun- 
teous liberty and radiance of air 


214 


Gox in. 


he could not draw one breath, 
he could not reach one wave of 
it, to slake his thirst of life. 

The poisoned growth filled 
every chink of the air passages 
as though they were tubes mor- 
tared up and closed hermeti- 
cally. His face grew purple 
and tumid, his eyes started 
from their sockets, his arms 
waved wildly, beckoning in 
space, he had no sense left 
except the mere instinctive 
mechanical effort to gasp for 
the air which he was never to 
breathe again. The five per- 
sons round him stood in silence, 
while the stifled sobs of the 
nun were heard ; the splash of 
oars echoed from the water be- 
low ; somewhere without a bird 
sang. 


XLoxin. 


215 

The Venetians spoke one 
with another, then turned to 
Damer. 

“ The end must be near. We 
ought to call in the assistance 
of the Church. We must not 
let him perish thus, unshrived, 
unannealed, like a pagan, like a 
dumb creature.” 

“ Do whatever you deem 
right,” replied Damer. “ With 
those matters I do not meddle.” 

The minutes went on; the 
nuns sank on their knees ; the 
one who wept hid her face on 
the coverlet of the bed. All 
which had so lately been the 
youth, the form, the vitality 
of Adrianis wrestled with death 
as a young lion tears at the 
walls of the den which im- 


2l6 


ftoiin. 


prisons him him. The terrible 
choking sounds roared through 
the air to which his closed 
throat could not open. Blood 
foamed in froth from his lips, 
which were curled up over the 
white teeth, and were cracked 
and blue. His eyes, starting 
from their orbits, had no sight. 
Darner ceased to look ; almost 
he regretted that which he had 
done. 

Suddenly the convulsions 
ceased. 

“ He is out of pain,” said one 
of the Venetians, in a solemn 
and hushed voice. 

“ He is dead,” said Darner. 

The women crossed them- 
selves. 

The little bird outside sang 
loudly. 


{Toxin. 


217 


The door opened, and the 
mother of Adrianis stood on 
the threshold. 

Six months later the man 
who had killed him wedded 
Veronica Zaranegra. Her fam- 
ily opposed, and her friends 
warned her, in vain ; she shrank 
from him, she feared him, she 
abhorred him, but the magnet- 
ism of his will governed hers 
till he shaped her conduct at 
his choice, as the hand of the 
sculptor moulds the clay. 

He became master of her 
person, of her fortune, of her 
destiny ; but her soul, fright- 
ened and dumb, forever escapes 
from him, and hides in the 
caverns of memory and regret. 







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From The International Dictionary : 

“ Bijou ; a word applied to anything small and of ele- 
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